


Soulmates In Pain

by PrinceLuffy



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Behavior, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff and Humor, I wrote this for myself, M/M, MacDen Beta Couple, Post-Season/Series 12, Substance Abuse, The Prophecy - Freeform, but you can read it if you want, canon-typical bigotry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:27:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 54,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25223881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceLuffy/pseuds/PrinceLuffy
Summary: Charlie and Dee have been dancing around each other since high school. After Charlie makes a drunken proclamation of love, the two of them are forced to acknowledge the feelings they have been suppressing for years.
Relationships: Charlie Kelly/Dee Reynolds, Mac McDonald/Dennis Reynolds
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this before I saw S13 or Time's Up so that had no effect on the plot that I created. This entire thing is a little OOC, but I did my best to try and keep things as close to canon as I could within the confines of the story. This is most definitely an exercise in self-indulgence because I love this pairing and wanted to write something for them. If this pairing makes you uncomfortable, I suggest that you do not read this story.
> 
> I spent a lot of time typing this up and editing and re-editing it until I was satisfied, several months in fact. I'm sure that there are still some mistakes and awkward language, but I really did try my best. I do not drink or do drugs aside from cannabis, so I had some friends of mine beta the sections involving substances that I was unfamiliar with, so I hope I did I decent job with them. If you can't already tell, I have a thing for flashbacks. I really enjoy making up backgrounds and tying them to the characters' current canon personalities.
> 
> The title comes from S03E03 when Ernesto is reading Dee's diary to Charlie and he calls her and Charlie soulmates in pain.
> 
> This is dedicated to my soulmate. The woman who inspired this story. I miss you everyday.
> 
> Many thanks to WeirdItalianPlumber for being my beta and my biggest supporter. I love you, Brittany.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dee finds a blackout drunk Charlie in her apartment.

_1:45 AM_

_On a Sunday_

_Philadelphia, PA_

It was late and the bar was near empty, so the gang was doing what they do best, drinking and arguing amongst themselves.

Charlie was slamming down drinks like it was the end of the world. He drank in complete silence, lost in his cups, ignoring the usual bickering taking place around him.

Since the incident involving the Waitress, Charlie had been angry and withdrawn. He had been drinking more than usual, which was saying something, considering that on a typical day he probably went through at least a keg’s worth of beer on his own.

None of the gang had pushed him to talk about his feelings. They were all too engrossed in their own problems. Since Dennis had left several months prior, Mac had been pouting near constantly, distracting himself with marathon sessions at the gym and indiscriminate nightly encounters with random beefcakes that he met at Rainbow. Frank had been absorbed in one scheme or another with Bill Ponderosa, and Dee had been spending as much time as possible out of her apartment since Charlie and Frank had started crashing there more consistently, trying to keep herself as far away from the two of them as possible lest she strangle them both.

Around midnight, Charlie got up. “I’m gonna head out,” he mumbled, slurring slightly. “Gotta come in and change the cheese in the traps tomorrow,” he explained, stumbling through the door and out into the warm Philadelphian night.

“He’s going to end up sleeping in a dumpster.” Mac commented, tossing back the last of his beer in one swallow and slamming the bottle down onto the bar counter dramatically.

“Speaking of great hook up spots,” Frank interrupted. “I’m going to be heading out myself. I just got a text from Artemis. She got a hold of some Columbian hash, things are gonna get crazy!” he bragged, flashing Mac and Dee the double guns and ignoring the disgruntled looks that the other two give him. “So, I’m not gonna be crashing at your place tonight, Deandra.”

“Oh no, what will I do?” Dee whined sarcastically, taking a swig from her beer.

“Now don’t be a bitch, Deandra.” Frank scolded, hopping down from the bar stool and straightening his pants on his pudgy little body. “Nobody likes when you do that, sweetie.”

“Nobody likes her at all!” Mac interjected, laughing at his own joke.

“Oh, fuck you both.” Dee said without much conviction. Their insults were stale, and she’d had more than enough to drink to dull any pain they might have caused her.

*******

Dee made her way back to her apartment around three o’ clock in the morning. She unlocked the door and sidled in, finding the living room mercifully empty. She breathed a sigh of relief. _Finally_ , she had the place to herself. She could sleep in her own fucking bed. Nude, if she wanted to. And there was nobody there to bother her. _Paradise._

She’d had quite a few drinks and was starting to feel tired and woozy. Dee couldn’t wait to slip into her pajamas and tuck herself into her own goddamn bed to sleep _all by herself_ for what felt like the first time in forever.

Dee wandered into her room, flipping on the light. Her bed hadn’t been made since Frank had slept in it the night before. She grimaced at the thought of Frank in her bed. Who knew what nasty shit he had smeared all over his body? She thought momentarily about changing the sheets, but decided that it was way too late, reasoning drunkenly that her immune system was strong enough to stand up to whatever diseases the man who raised her might have infested her bed with. If she could share a bed with a homeless black man for a year, then she could certainly handle whatever Frank Reynolds might throw at her.

She drifted over to her chest of drawers, pulling open the top one and rifling through it, searching for her pajamas. Her thoughts began to drift and Charlie popped into her head. He had looked really bad when he left the bar, the worst that she had seen him in a while. Dee wondered idly where he was spending the night. He might have been sleeping in the park; he had been known to do that sometimes when they were in high school when his Uncle Jack was staying over. Or did he go back home to the Waitress? Since she had moved in several weeks ago, Charlie had made a habit of staying with Dee. He had frequently forced himself into her apartment, ignoring her protestations and shoving her aside so that he could wedge in next to her on her way too small couch, much to her eternal chagrin. Frank had flat out refused to go back to their apartment until Charlie kicked the Waitress out. He had also rejected the idea of renting a new place and instead made himself home in Dee’s apartment, kicking her out of her bed and leaving his nasty toe knife on her kitchen table. For a man with a shitton of money, Frank was probably the cheapest man she had ever known. The entire situation was a fucking nightmare.

Dee let out an exhausted sigh, tugging off her tee shirt and flinging it towards the hamper, missing it entirely, not willing to go through the trouble of picking it up and putting it in the basket. She shimmied out of her jeans and added them to the pile on the floor, not even bothering to attempt to toss it anywhere near the hamper a second time. She poured herself into her rattiest, most comfortable pajamas: an oversized Philly’s jersey that she had stolen from some guy she had slept with whose name and face she couldn’t be bothered to remember and a pair of red booty shorts that were so worn they were likely to turn to dust if she wasn’t careful. Pulling her flaxen hair back into a loose ponytail at the base of her neck, she padded into the bathroom, flipping on the light.

“HOLY FUCK!”

Charlie Kelly was slumped against the wall of her bathroom, his head lolling around bonelessly. His eyes were barely open, only a hint of green visible. They were unfocused and dull, as though he wasn’t really seeing anything around him. He looked even worse than he had when he left the bar, if that was possible. His dark hair was messier than usual, sticking up wildly in every direction, leaves and twigs stuck in the mussed curls. His face was covered in a sheen of grime, dirty and scratched and bruised. He looked like he had gotten into a fight with a junkyard cat and lost. She wouldn’t have been surprised if that was actually the case.

“Jesus Christ, Charlie.” Dee whined exasperatedly, dropping to her knees and scooting across the bathroom floor towards her long-time friend. She placed her hand on his shoulder, shaking him lightly, trying to rouse Charlie into consciousness, which only caused his head to loll from side to side like a ragdoll. She felt a dark pit forming in the bottom of her stomach, as if her guts had suddenly filled with ice water. _This looks bad_. Dee thought as she placed her thumb above his eyelid and pulled upward slightly. His eyes rolled backward, revealing the whites. “Fuck,” she hissed under her breath.

Suddenly, Charlie’s head snapped straight up like a monster in a horror movie and Dee shrieked in spite of herself, scrambling backward on the linoleum at top speed. He leapt toward the toilet, burying his head in the bowl and retching violently. Dee managed to regain her composure. Slowly crawling back over to him and reaching out to tentatively rub his back in circles while heaved into her toilet, his body shaking violently underneath her hand as he expelled what seemed like more vomit than his tiny body should reasonably have been able to hold. When he was finally done emptying the contents of his stomach into her poor, abused toilet, Charlie slumped backward against the wall, breathing heavily. His face was slicked with sweat, pallid with a yellowish tinge that made him look like he had jaundice.

He looked absolutely wrecked.

Over the years, Dee had seen Charlie push himself past his limits more than once. It didn’t happen often, because Charlie Kelly had the alcohol tolerance of a six hundred pound gorilla, but when he did, it was truly a sight to behold. She resigned herself to the fact that she wouldn’t be getting to bed anytime soon, unless she left him on the floor to fend for himself, but something deep inside of her wouldn’t allow her to do that. Today Charlie seemed especially bad, she had never seen him look so completely and utterly destroyed. He looked like he had no fight left in him and she had never known Charlie not to be a fighter. She frowned, “Charlie, what did you do to yourself?” she asked, her voice coming out gentler than she expected. 

“D’member,” Charlie slurred, his eyes rolling up to look at Dee, clearly struggling to keep her in focus. “Went under the bridge,” he mumbled. _Oh, good lord_. He was strung out on hobo drugs from the degenerates that he and Frank hung out with under the bridge. God only knew what the fuck he took. Charlie’s eyes glazed over again and began to cross. He leaned his head back against the wall with a pained groan, his eyelashes fluttering down.

Dee expelled a long, exhausted sigh, blowing a few stray yellow hairs off of her face. She shakily pushed herself to her feet and made her way to the linen closet and opened it. She picked through her towels, deciding which washcloth she didn’t mind seeing totally destroyed because she knew that after she used it to clean the mess that was on Charlie’s face, it would be fit for the trash. She grabbed an old, ratty washcloth that she rarely used anymore and went to the shower, crouching down and turning on the faucet. She adjusted the temperature so that it was warm, but not scalding, and soaked the washcloth. Dee pulled her body wash off the shelf and poured a generous amount into the cloth, rubbing it into a lather. It was an expensive body wash that smelled like honey and lavender, but she wasn’t really thinking about the price for once. She wondered why she didn’t own a First Aid kit. Maybe she should steal the one they kept in the Chardee Macdennis box.

She scooted her butt across the bathroom floor and positioned herself next to Charlie. The blonde placed the washcloth on his skin and started scrubbing gently, knowing that his head must be spinning. Charlie groaned again slightly, but he didn’t push her away; he didn’t have the strength to. Neither of them said anything while Dee carefully cleaned the filth from his forehead and cheeks. She returned to the tub a few more times to wring out the dirty washcloth and add more body wash. When she felt he was sufficiently clean, Dee heaved him too his feet, her skinny arms shaking with the strain. 

“Come on, let’s get you to bed,” she said wearily, wiping the sleep from her eyes. Forgetting she had not removed her make-up, she proceeded to smear a line of black eyeliner down her cheek like war paint.

“Okay,” he mumbled.

She moved to toss the washcloth into the trash can but before she had a chance to turn back around and lead him to the couch, Charlie had already stumbled his way into her room and flopped, face-first, into her bed. Dee released a loud, angry sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration. It would be too much of a hassle to try and move him again – he was barely able to stand upright as it was. Too tired to care, she resigned herself to the fact that Charlie was going to be sleeping in her bed and strode into the bedroom, grabbing the trash can and placing it on the floor by his head. “Thanks,” he murmured, not opening his eyes. Dee patted his head awkwardly. _Jesus his hair is soft._

“I don’t want you puking on my floor,” she replied automatically, without much bite. Dee went back into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. Her mouth tasted like she had eaten a pile of dirt and now that the adrenaline that came with discovering Charlie out cold on her bathroom floor had passed, Dee was starting to feel the effects of how much she had drank. She quickly dried her face and made her way back to her bedroom.

Dee stood in the entrance of her bedroom for a few minutes, staring at the small, disheveled figure taking up the right side of her bed. When Charlie had stayed the night at her place over the past few weeks, they had periodically fought over ownership of the couch since Frank had commandeered the bed and refused to share it with either of them. More often than she liked, Charlie ended up ignoring her protests and wedged himself onto the loveseat beside her, forcing her to sleep in the crevice pushed up against his wiry frame. However, there was no fucking way that Dee was going to spend another night on the couch when she had access to a perfectly good bed, Charlie or no Charlie.

Dee wriggled underneath the covers and grabbed her phone off the bedside table, checking the time. It was half past four in the morning. Charlie had kept her occupied for over an hour. Her eyelids felt heavy and she began drifting to sleep when the man beside her changed positions.

The messy-haired brunette threw his arm over her waist and pulled her into him, burying his head in the nape of her neck. Dee froze, her back as stiff as a board. She wasn’t sure if she was even breathing. Suddenly, she felt wide awake, every nerve in her body tingling like a live-wire. She knew that she should shove him off of her, but she couldn’t bring herself move him. This type of closeness felt entirely different from ramming themselves together on her tiny couch out of spite because neither of them wanted to sleep on the floor. This wasn’t cramped and unpleasant, in fact, it felt strangely warm and intimate. It was comfortable. Dee balked and tried to force those thoughts from her head as quickly as they had occurred.

The feel of Charlie’s breath on her skin sent unexpected shivers down her spine. _What the fuck, Dee?_ Her brain screamed at her. _This is Charlie Kelly. Dirtgrub! What are you getting excited for?_ She must be even drunker than she thought. He smelled faintly of honey and lavender on top of his typical Charlie smell, which was an unpleasant mix of cat food and airplane glue.

“Hey Dee?”

She jumped, her heart slamming against her chest. She had thought that he had already fallen asleep. The blonde quickly deliberated whether she should just pretend that she was asleep, but instead she spoke. “Y–Yeah?” she asked. Her voice felt much too loud in the silence of the apartment.

“I think I fucked up," he told her pitifully. His breath was hot on her neck and still smelled of alcohol. “I fucked up with the Waitress. I don’t know what I was thinking,” he whined, and Dee felt a mix of pity and resentment. He was right. He _had_ fucked up. He had fucked up the moment he set his sights on that horrible bitch. The pregnancy plan was just another fuck up in a long line of terrible decisions that Charlie had made in his pursuit of her. Dee considered telling him so. Typically, she reveled in telling people when they were wrong. It made her feel superior and in control of her own life, but right now, she didn’t have the energy nor the desire to interrupt the slender man’s self-pitying rambling. He continued unbidden, “It was such a stupid plan to try and get her pregnant. I’m glad it failed.” Charlie spoke carefully and deliberately, trying to muscle through his extreme intoxication, but he still stumbled over his words, his tongue heavy and clumsy. 

“Yeah, me too.” Dee responded, realizing with some surprise that she meant what she was saying. If they were at Paddy’s she would have scolded him, berated him in front of the others to establish her dominance and prove she wasn’t at the bottom of the pack; but here in the dark solitude of her apartment, lying with a Charlie who would certainly not remember anything in the morning, she felt safe lowering her walls – if only a little – and expressing herself without layers of bitterness coating her words. “I don’t think she’s right for you, Charlie.” Dee admitted, immediately regretting her words the instant the passed her lips. She knew that she should not be saying anything about their relationship, that what happened between Charlie and the Waitress was none of her concern, but she continued despite her internal turmoil. “She’s a bitch,” she added, and Charlie snorted. “Now you just need to get your apartment back and get the fuck off my couch.” Dee snapped, her voice coming out a little bit meaner than she had meant it to. She swallowed the anger that threatened to rise to the surface. It was too fucking late to get worked up.

Charlie chuckled, “You’re probably right,” he mumbled, nuzzling her neck, his beard brushing against her and tickling her skin. She stiffened, thankful that it was dark because she was positive that she was blushing, like a jackass. The room fell silent and she listened as Charlie’s breathing began to even out. She was relieved, thinking that he had finally fallen into unconsciousness when he whispered her name. “Dee?”

“Hmm?”

“I love you.”

*******

Dee did not sleep well. In fact, she wasn’t sure that she had slept at all.

After his “confession” Charlie had slipped into a drunken slumber while Dee spent the rest of the night trapped underneath his unusually strong arm, freaking the fuck out. It was clear that Charlie had been totally inebriated, so everything that he had said to her meant nothing really, at least that was what she had kept telling herself all night. People said stupid things when they were plastered, she knew that from decades of experience. Charlie was no different.

Sure, he had said it to her a couple times before, but those times hadn’t meant anything either. Kissing someone and telling them that you love them when you were being held at gunpoint (even if those guns had turned out to be rubber) was just the result of fear and adrenaline, it was not meant to be taken seriously. The second time he had told her that he loved her, he was under the threat of anthrax – well, baking powder. She had forced it out of him because she felt angry and rejected that he had not gotten her a valentine in favor of attempting to take his revenge on an intestinal parasite. An impromptu valentine song was not exactly a true public declaration of love. Dee had laughed the whole thing off because she had an image to maintain and it was a lot easier than dealing with the way it made her heart skip a beat when he finished his song with those three little words.

So clearly, a third confession, unquestionably fueled by alcohol and drugs, meant nothing at all. So why did this time feel different? She threw an arm over her face and suppressed the urge to groan. This was fucking embarrassing. Why was she even obsessing about this at all? Her head ached dully and she felt pinpricks behind her closed eyes. The lethal combination of excessive drinking and lack of sleep was taking its toll on her.

_“Oh my God!”_

Charlie screamed suddenly, shattering her silent reverie. He shot up abruptly, nearly causing Dee to fall out of the bed. She managed to push herself up slowly and fought the wave of intense nausea that threatened to overtake her as her world spun violently on its axis.

Charlie looked panicked, his bright green eyes darting around the room, searching for an escape route. “What the fuck, Dee?” he snapped, his eyes wide and blazing with fury. The grubby brunette’s face was pallid, his skin gaunt and white, the same color as curdled milk. “Did you try to bang me again?” he accused, waving his arms erratically, his pitch quickly rising from a yell to a full-on screech. Dee was starting to get extremely pissed off. Her brain was pulsating, banging at the sides of her head like a jackhammer was trapped in her skull. She had helped him out last night and now he was being a total asshole. _What’s so fucking terrible about spending the night with me anyway?_ Dee thought, bitterly.

“Shut the fuck up, Charlie!” she hollered, rattling the dust off the ceiling. He snapped his mouth shut, glaring pointedly at her. “When I got home you were shit-faced with your head stuffed down the toilet and then _you_ up and decided to crash your stupid ass in _my_ bed.”

Charlie opened his mouth to retort when suddenly all the color rapidly drained from his face. He went green around the gills and her eyes widened as she realized what was happening. “Shit!” she screeched, “Trash can! Trash can!” she yelled urgently, pointing to the side of the bed behind him. Charlie took the hint and threw his head over the side of the bed just as he started to heave. Dee looked away, listening to him vomit noisily and gagging, praying that her own stomach wouldn’t come up. After a couple of minutes of retching, Charlie sat up shakily, turning back to face her again. All the anger had been sapped from his features and he looked exhausted, trembling slightly.

“I guess I could be a little hung over,” he conceded, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Ya think?”

“Whatever,” he replied dismissively, shrugging. She glared at him, her eyes twin typhoons of pure, ocean blue. The alcohol fueled storm in her head was gaining momentum and threatening to explode. Thankfully, Charlie noticed the wrathful look on her face and quickly shifted gears, attempting to avoid her fury. “Want some breakfast?” he asked hopefully, giving her a lopsided smile. Dee gnawed the inside of her cheek, trying to bite back another outburst. How _dare_ he look so adorable even when he was hungover as shit? Even with his chocolate curls an unruly mess and his eyes bloodshot, he still looked cute. It wasn’t fair that he could get absolutely tanked and still look half-way decent the next morning while she looked like a zombie.

“Ugh,” Dee sighed, massaging her throbbing temples. “Look, I didn’t exactly have a light night either,” she admitted, running her fingers through her messy tangles of straw-colored hair. She probably looked like a demon scarecrow come to life. “My head feels like it’s going to explode. Can you settle for cereal?” Dee inquired.

“Sure,” he replied, flashing her that lopsided, goofy grin of his again, which was making her feel warm inside for reasons that she had no desire to contemplate further.

*******

About twenty minutes and several tablets of Aspirin later, Charlie and Dee were sitting across from each other at Dee’s shitty plastic kitchen table. They were both nursing mugs of black coffee that Dee had added a generous amount of whiskey to, in order to take the edge off.

Her bowl of Rice Krispies sat in front of her untouched. She watched with mild fascination as Charlie dug into his with gusto. She wondered momentarily how he could possibly be hungry after upchucking less than a half hour ago. Just the sight of food was making her feel queasy. Charlie chattered away, barely pausing to take a breath, flecks of cereal flying from his lips as he spoke at lightning speed. In truth, Dee was only half listening to what he was saying while he prattled on about the finer techniques of the art of luring stray cats for petting. “Hey Dee,” he said, “I’m sorry I got so fucked up last night.” he apologized, taking another bite of cereal. “I didn’t say anything weird, did I?”

Dee nearly choked on her coffee, praying Charlie didn’t notice the color rising in her cheeks. She worked to meet his eye and found herself overwhelmed by the intensity of his gaze. _Have his eyes always been so green?_ “N-No,” the blonde stammered, surprised by how shaky and timid her voice sounded. “Why do you ask?”

Charlie shrugged, “No reason,” he stated. “I don’t really remember anything after going to the bridge,” he confessed. It was certainly not the first time that he had blacked out, and it definitely would not be the last, but something about having long gaps in his memory had always made him feel uneasy. He didn’t care to dwell on the reason why that might be. “I don’t even know how I got here,” he explained, chuckling a little. He ran his fingers through his already messy russet hair and smiled stupidly at her. Dee was beginning to feel her frustration mounting again, rising up the back of her throat like bile. It felt like something vile was eating away at the back of her skull, annoying the hell out of her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. “I figured I’d wake up with the Waitress.”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Dee replied flatly, taking another generous sip of her coffee, willing the booze to soothe the sick throbbing in her head. “I found you in my bathroom with your head in the toilet.”

“Heh, classic,” he snorted and Dee saw red.

“Annoying is what it is!” she snapped, her tone as sharp as a blade. Dee was not even entirely sure what she was so angry about. Sure, it was aggravating to discover Charlie passed out in yet another inconvenient place, forcing her to pick up after him, but it wasn’t as though it was the first time she had taken care of a wasted Charlie Kelly. Yes, it was irritating to have to babysit a grown man, but was that _really_ why she was so pissed off? Her stomach was twisted in painful knots and she recognized with a jolt of surprise that she was scared. Scared of believing a drunken declaration of love. Scared of opening herself up, of taking her walls down and willingly allowing herself to be vulnerable with _anyone_ , let alone the man sitting across the table from her. She absolutely hated it when she wasn’t in control of her feelings because it only ever led to her getting fucked over. The joke’s on Dee. The joke was _always_ on Dee. Mushy feelings would only lead to pain and disappointment. So, she decided to do what she did best, which was to suppress her emotions into a manageable size, compartmentalize them, and lash out.

Charlie frowned, his eyebrows knitting together. “You’re one to talk,” he retorted, irritation beginning to seep into his tone. “You’re as hung over as I am,” he pointed out.

“Maybe so,” she agreed, unable to keep the venom from poisoning her words. Her head was pounding now, thrumming intensely at her temples as if someone were pounding on a drum inside of her skull. “But at least I’m not a delusional dickhole hiding from my problems in someone else’s apartment!” The words came tumbling out before she could stop herself. Years of frustration over Charlie’s obsession with the Waitress had finally come simmering to the surface, bubbling over like a pot left too long on the stove.

His pine-colored eyes narrowed, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think it’s supposed to mean?” she snarled, hissing like an angry cat. “You’ve been trying to bang the same skank for fifteen goddamn years and now that you finally have her, you don’t fucking want her! Then you come here! You came to me! _Why!?_ ” Dee was panting, her cheeks red and blotchy. This was way too much exertion this early in the morning, especially when she had a wicked hangover. Dee’s stomach turned and she thought she might puke on the table.

Charlie scowled at her. “We’re just having a rough patch,” he claimed, his ears reddening as his own fury built towards a fever pitch. “I can fix it. She’ll be back to her old self soon,” he insisted, and Dee wondered if it was her that he was really trying to reassure.

She let out an aggravated squeal that made her sound like a train whistle. “Why won’t you just face reality?” Dee screamed, incensed. She pulled at her already disheveled blonde hair in frustration, causing it to stick out in random directions, giving her the appearance of an escaped mental patient in a shitty horror movie. “This is who she’s always been! You were just too deluded to see it!”

Charlie glowered, his emerald eyes glinting with barely suppressed rage. What right did Dee Reynolds have to tell him how to handle his relationship? He hadn’t come to her apartment for any special reason. He had been drunk out of his mind last night. He could have just as easily ended up at Mac and Dennis’ place. (Well, just Mac’s place now.)

“What do you know?” the brunette snapped, his voice cracking. “You’ve never even had a real relationship, you heartless bitch!” he yelled and as soon as the words flew out of his mouth, he regretted them instantly. His stomach roiled painfully.

Dee’s mouth snapped shut with a clack of her jaw and she fixed him with a glare that turned his blood to ice water in his veins. She calmly placed her palms flat on the table and pushed herself up, turning on her heel and marching into the bathroom without another word. Charlie heard the door slam shut with enough force to shatter the frame. A few minutes later he heard the shower running.

Charlie sat in silence, watching the Rice Krispies in his bowl as they slowly turned into congealed mush. He willed the tangle of thoughts rushing through his head to quiet. Why was Dee so pissed at him when he hadn’t done anything wrong? It wasn’t like she had never gotten annihilated and ended up crashing in some unfortunate place. He wasn’t the only one who had slept in a pile of trash before. It wasn’t fair. She wasn’t being reasonable. The more Charlie tried to parse through his mess of feelings, the more confused he became. His head was starting to bang again.

_God, what happened last night?_

*******

_The football field was thankfully deserted, which made sense, considering that it was only ten past eleven in the morning._

_Dee had decided to skip out of her third period Trigonometry class, slipping out the back door by the gym and meandering towards the field._

_The period before she had been in her English class. She sat in the back of the room next to a forgettable faced brunette whose name she could not remember for the life of her. Her teacher, Mr. Wexler, had been discussing the symbolism present in_ Catcher in the Rye _, jotting down examples on the blackboard behind him. He turned to face the class. “And who can tell me the symbolism behind Holden’s red hunting hat?”_

_Dee raised her hand._

_When she moved her arm, her brace made an ungodly screeching noise, like the unoiled tin man in the Wizard of Oz and all the chatter around her ceased immediately. Abruptly, all eyes zeroed in on her, their judgmental gazes penetrated her like laser beams. She felt entirely exposed, like a dissected specimen on display. As if in slow motion, Dee watched the transformations of their expressions. Abruptly, their once placid faces began to twist, contorting into ugly caricatures. They were like demons surrounding her, trapping her with their piercing stares._

_That was when the peals of laughter began to well up around her, washing over her in angry waves, drowning her in mockery. Suddenly, everything around her felt Too Loud and Too Bright and she wished that she could cover her ears and screw her eyes shut, blocking them out. The laughter felt as though it was surrounding her completely, engulfing her like a wildfire. It flooded her senses and trapped her in what felt like a never-ending tornado of vile insults and taunts, imprisoning her in her humiliation._

_No matter what she did, she was still the Aluminum Monster. A freak. A joke. She wanted to scream and yank her hair out._

_Mr. Wexler tried his best to calm the class, but his efforts were in vain. Dee was pissed off at him, but deep down she understood that there was little that a middle-aged professor could do to control a class of unruly teenagers bent on humiliating one of their peers._

_Dee was well aware of the fact that high school kids were monsters. Cruel creatures who thrilled in weeding out the weak and vulnerable amongst them and feasting on their self-esteem like ravenous jackals. Dee loathed every single one of them with a burning passion. Yet, she still desperately wished to be one of them, to fit in. For once, she wanted to be in on the joke rather than the center of it._

_Dee gnawed the inside of her cheek until she tasted the coppery tang of fresh blood on her tongue. She knew that if she fought back the ridicule would only become worse, so she kept her mouth clamped shut. She clenched her fists in her lap, digging her nails into the tender flesh on her palms. She would be damned if she allowed any of these bastards to see her cry. She stubbornly refused to let them see her weakness, building a steel wall around her emotions in an attempt to prevent herself from being torn apart._

_It took everything in her to not just get up and bolt from the classroom that very second._

_When the bell finally rang, Dee was out of her seat like a shot. Mr. Wexler tried to ask her to stay behind, but she pretended that she didn’t hear him, rushing out the door and throwing herself into the clambering mob of students._

_Dee wished desperately that she could just blend into the crowd, but there was no such luck for the Aluminum Monster. She was a freak. An abomination that drew gap-mouthed stares and cruel whispers from the people around her. A monstrosity. Her suppressed tears began to prick the corners of her eyes, threatening to escape, but she bit them back harshly._

_Suddenly, Dee remembered that she had a joint hidden in her bag and decided that her next class wasn’t all that important._

_As she made her way towards the back of the bleachers, she heard a faint hiccupping sound._

_Dee stopped walking, her overly large feet glued to the spot. She listened intently, trying to ascertain the source of the noise. She managed to discern someone was crying, sniveling loudly. She paused momentarily, considering turning tail and running away to find some other place to smoke, but she remained motionless._

_“Is someone there?” she called out._

_“No!” a bodiless voice called back, followed by a quieter, “Fuck.”_

_Dee made her way underneath the bleachers, weaving in between the poles, until she found the source of the crying. She was only mildly surprised when she came upon Charlie Kelly._

_It was not the first time that they had run into each other under the bleachers. Except today he looked absolutely miserable. The short teen was sitting on the grass, leaning against one of the silver poles that held up the bleachers. He was hunched over, his shoulders slumped forward in apparent defeat, tears still streaming down his cheeks. “Charlie?” He jolted when she said his name, turning to look up at her. When he realized who was speaking to him, he started furiously rubbing his eyes, trying to wipe away any evidence of his tears. “What are you doing here?” Dee asked, shuffling between the beams to stand next to him._

_“I could ask you the same thing,” he replied, glancing up at her with puffy, red-rimmed eyes. His bright green eyes were wet with tears, glittering like rain-slicked marbles. Her heart panged as she studied her friend’s dejected appearance._

_“School sucks and everyone is a bag of dicks.” Dee groused, her previous frustration suddenly overtaking her emotions again. The lanky blonde struggled valiantly to sink to the ground next to him, but her steel brace kept her back in an uncomfortably rigid position. She ended up plopping down on the grass ungracefully, eliciting a giggle from Charlie. She punched his arm hard and he swore._

_“What happened?” he questioned, and Dee thought for a moment that he sounded genuinely concerned, but she shrugged it off immediately. People were rarely ever concerned about her._

_“The same old bullshit,” the blonde stated, glaring at the ground with such ferocity that it felt as though she were trying to set it ablaze with her mind. “Ugly girl in an ugly brace. I make an easy target.” Dee griped, feeling the tears threatening to fall again. She did not want to cry in front of Charlie. In truth, she absolutely despised crying in front of other people. It made her look hideous and weak, at least that is what her mother had always told her. Although, there was another part of her – a very small part – that thought that it might be alright to take down her emotional wall, if it was Charlie. She felt that unlike everyone else, Charlie wouldn’t make fun of her ugly sobbing face. Especially because Ronnie and her brother weren’t there to goad him into joining in on their mockery, but she didn’t want to take the risk, so she swallowed her tears._

_“Yeah, everyone in this school is a douchebag.” Charlie agreed, nodding sagely._

_“What about you?” she asked, “Why are you out here?” She quickly tried to steer the conversation away from her own humiliation._

_He expelled a long, drawn out sigh and studied his shoes. They were ugly, beat-up sneakers, held together with silver duct tape. “It’s this girl in my History class.” he mumbled, “She’s like, the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen, dude.” Charlie explained, turning to face the blonde sitting beside him. The brunette emphasized his words with wild hand gestures, nearly smacking Dee in the face when he swung his hand in her direction. “She’s nice to me. She even loaned me a pencil once. So, I’m thinking that we’re soulmates, right? So, I wrote her this poem and she–” his voice hitched, and his gaze returned to his shabby sneakers. Dee watched his eyes started to grow moist again. “She laughed. Told me that she’d never date some Dirtgrub that can’t even do his ABC’s.”_

_Dee was sympathetic to his plight. After all, she knew what it felt like to be the freak. The outcast. A side show attraction to be displayed and abused for other people’s amusement. The two of them were both on the lowest tier of the high school hierarchy. Dee was the Aluminum Monster. She was too tall and gangly, with arms like twigs and hands the size of a catcher’s mitt by comparison. A horrible abomination trapped in metal. She was the ugly twin, the unwanted mistake that her mother clearly loathed. She lived in the spotlight and shadows simultaneously._

_Charlie, on the other hand, was the Dirtgrub. He was much too small for his age, barely reaching five foot three. He was always unkempt and dirty. He wore the same handful of grubby, stained tee shirts every week and his jeans were so worn that you could see the skin on his knees through the denim. Charlie was visibly white trash. His poverty seeped off of him like cartoon stink lines. Still, Dee liked Charlie all the same, although she would be loath to admit it to anyone, including him. She thought that he could be incredibly sweet, especially when the two of them were alone together. He was way nicer to her than Dennis and Ronnie had ever been._

_“Sounds like a bitch,” Dee intoned, “What’s her name, anyway? Do I know her?”_

_“Um–” Charlie sputtered, blushing a bright crimson all the way to the roots of his birch-colored hair. Dee gaped at him for a few moments before bursting into laughter._

_“How do you not know her name, Charlie?” Dee cackled, smacking his shoulder so hard he jolted forward at the impact. “No fucking wonder she turned you down.”_

_“Shut up,” he whined defensively, rubbing his arm where she had whapped him. “That kind of thing doesn’t matter when you’re in love.” Charlie insisted, nearly yelling to make himself heard over Dee’s tittering laughs._

_Eventually, the blonde laughed herself out and the two of them fell into a comfortable silence, sitting side by side on the wet grass, not looking at each other. After a little while, Dee recalled the reason she had come under the bleachers in the first place. She turned to Charlie, “Wanna get high?” she asked, smiling at him._

_“Always,” he replied, grinning back at her._

_Dee unzipped her purse and started to shuffle through its contents until her fingers wrapped around a familiar shape. She pulled out a small, bright red zippered pouch. She unzipped it, fishing out a tampon and holding it up triumphantly._

_“Uh, Dee?” he inquired, raising an eyebrow. “What the hell is that?”_

_She frowned at him, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion. Was he really that stupid? “It’s a tampon, dingus,” she told him, rolling her blue eyes dismissively and turning the package over. She had cut the top off of the paper casing and the white plastic tube fell directly into her outstretched palm. Charlie watched in fascination as Dee shoved her finger into the top of the applicator, where she had removed the cotton, and tugged out a thin, hand rolled joint._

_“Oh, shit Dee, that’s genius!” Charlie gushed, eyes glittering with admiration. He patted his oversized, battered black jacket until he felt what he was looking for, pulling a lighter out of his pocket. He held it out to her and Dee noticed that it was a cheap, bright blue Bic. Damn, was he so poor that he couldn’t even afford a decent Zippo?_

_Dee accepted the tiny, plastic lighter from the boy beside her and lit the tip of the joint. She inhaled deeply and held her breath for a few long seconds, before tilting her head backward and exhaling a slow stream of smoke above their heads. The air around them began to fill with the skunky sweet scent of marijuana._

_Dee held the spliff out to Charlie and he took it from her, flashing her that dopey smile of his. She found herself smiling back as she watched him take a hit. He coughed a little. “You’re not so bad, Charlie.” Dee had started speaking without thinking, barely aware that she was saying anything out loud._

_Getting stoned tended to make her stupid and talkative, verbalizing every passing thought in her head without a filter. Charlie’s dark brows drew together in confusion. He gave her a strange look. His eyes were already glassy from the weed, but Dee still flushed a little under his gaze._

_“What I mean is–” she began, desperately trying to yank her foot out of her mouth. She stumbled over her words, suddenly feeling very self-conscious and uncomfortably aware of the person sitting next to her. “You’re sweet. It’s her loss,” the blonde mumbled quickly, obviously embarrassed. Dee reached out cautiously and patted his back gently, albeit a bit awkwardly. She was surprised to see the barest hint of pink tinging his cheeks, making his freckles stand out._

_“Thanks Dee,” he replied, smiling bashfully as he handed the joint back to her. “You’re sweet too.” he told her, his sage eyes twinkling in the mid-morning sun. “Heh, Sweet Dee.” he mused, chuckling to himself._

_Dee broke eye contact and took another lengthy toke, trying to hide her smile. She was starting to feel a lot better, comfortable and warm. Her head was filled with a pleasant buzz. A soft static that made her troubles turn into dust, floating out her ears and dissipating into the air. Dee decided that her contentment was the result of the weed and had nothing to do with the company._

*******

When Dee and Charlie arrived at the bar, Charlie made a beeline directly towards the basement and disappeared down the stairs without a word. For an instant, Dee considered going after him and trying to sort some of this shit out, but she crushed the urge mercilessly.

There was a foreign part of her wanted to apologize to him for the things she had said that morning. Deep down, she knew that she had been really harsh, but it was not as though her insulting him was something new. Charlie _needed_ harsh. He needed someone who would smack some sense into him when he was being narrow-minded and obstinate. Her blowing up at him had been inevitable, really. Dee was sick and tired of his wishy-washy behavior concerning a problem he had orchestrated himself. She was (of course) not motivated in any way by anything that Charlie had said the previous night when they were lying together in the dark. _No, not at all._

Dee sighed, running her slender, white-tipped fingers through her long, flaxen tresses. She went behind the bar and decided to try and occupy herself by arranging things for the day. She grabbed a handful of limes and a knife and got to work slicing them. Her plucked to the wire brows knitted together as she concentrated on the task at hand, trying to clear her mind. God, look at what that pint-sized jackass was doing to her. She was actually _doing her_ _job_ to avoid thinking about him and his dumb cute face and his dorky smile and his stupid fluffy hair.

“What’s up, bitches?”

Dee didn’t bother looking up as Mac waltzed into Paddy’s with his usual pompous flair.

“Oh, it’s just you.” Mac acknowledged her flatly, not bothering to hide the disappointment in his voice. Dee rolled her eyes as her muscular co-worker made his way over to the bar, sighing dramatically and plopping down on one of the stools.

“Hello to you too, dicknose.” Dee sniped, flashing him a sharp glare before returning to her limes.

Mac blatantly ignored the venom in her voice. “Where’s Charlie and Frank?” he asked, leaning across the counter and snatching a beer from the cooler. He popped the cap against the lip of the bar and took a long swig.

“Charlie’s in the basement.” Dee informed him, abandoning the limes and grabbing herself a beer. She used one of the bottle openers behind the bar to uncap it and proceeded to flick the cap expertly into the sink where it landed with a satisfying clang. “Frank’s probably still with Artemis, tripping on acid and stuffing firecrackers into each other’s assholes or whatever the fuck it is that they do.” Dee tossed her head back and took several generous gulps, downing half of her beer in one go. She glanced at her watch and noticed that it was barely noon and she was already drinking. But really, who gave a shit if it was barely half past twelve? What did she have to lose? Did that make her an alcoholic? Maybe. But it wasn’t like anyone gave a fuck about whether or not she was a drunk, least of all her.

Dee expelled a loud, undignified belch. Mac scrunched his nose in disgust.

“Gross, Dee.” Mac replied, but his voice was missing the usual mark of unadulterated loathing that defined the majority of his interactions with her. Dee observed her long-time cohort curiously. She had memorized enough about his behavior over the years to recognize that something was off with him. Mac looked nervous, twiddling his thumbs and looking around the empty bar, his brown eyes avoiding her face. It was completely out of character and it was starting to unnerve her. She was much more comfortable trading insults than whatever the fuck this was.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, raising her hackles slightly, just in case he initiated a verbal sparring match. Mac breathed out another drawn out sigh and ran his fingers through his perfectly oiled hair. He took another long swill from his beer and frowned at her, his forehead creasing in agitation.

Finally, Mac asked, “Have you heard from Dennis at all?” He was obviously trying to sound nonchalant, but Dee could hear a note of distress leeching into his voice. _Ah,_ she relaxed, her walls lowering back down to their normal level. Of course, that was what Mac was worried about. It was the same thing that he was _always_ worried about. Her asshole brother.

The truth was that over the past several months since Dennis had left Philadelphia, neither she nor her twin had made much of an effort to keep in contact beyond the superficial. Despite their near constant presence in one another’s lives over the past few decades, they had never been the closest of siblings – at least not on an emotional level. When they did communicate, it was usually through a series of texts and memes that never went beyond light banter. Dennis would call her occasionally. Usually, when it was late at night, after the bar was closed and he was drunk off his ass. He would shout so loudly that she was forced to hold the phone away from her ear, lest she go deaf. During those inebriated phone sessions, he always wanted to talk about himself, something Dee was more than familiar with after nearly forty years together. From the moment he could string sentences together, Dennis Reynolds had wanted to focus every conversation on himself.

Her runaway sibling would brag about how _well_ he was doing in North Dakota. How he had already been promoted at his new job, what a spectacular father he was to Brian, all the pussy he was getting. He never went into explicit detail, which led Dee to assume that he was probably not doing quite as well as he maintained that he was. Dee would listen to him ramble, rolling her eyes at his incessant bragging. Nearly every call, the conversation would inevitably turn to the roommate that he had left behind when he decided to leave Philly. He would pester her with questions about how Mac was handling himself now that he no longer had Dennis’ impeccable guidance. Whenever she tried to give him an answer, her twin would cut her off, loudly reassuring himself that _of course_ Mac was struggling in his absence, because who wouldn’t? But he _had_ to leave, you know? Dee would let Dennis drunkenly assure himself that he was doing amazingly well in North Dakota and even better without Mac until the conversation predictably switched courses to some other inane topic. 

Dee did not tell Mac any of this. She had never really understood whatever fucked up thing he and Dennis had going on, and if she was being completely honest, she didn’t really want to.

“Not for a while,” she told him, taking another swig of her beer and swishing it around in her mouth before swallowing it. It wasn’t a lie. There had been radio silence on Dennis’ end for nearly two weeks. Not even the sporadic text of a picture of an ugly bird with _it you_ beneath it, but Dee had not given it much thought. She had assumed that Dennis had been communicating with Mac and Charlie in the meantime. If she was being completely honest, the lanky blonde was a tad surprised to hear that even her brother’s favorite hadn’t been in contact with him.

“Oh,” Mac muttered, visibly deflating, sinking down in his stool like a punctured balloon. “I haven’t heard much of anything in over a month,” he admitted, sadly. Mac studied the label on his beer, picking at the corner of it with the tip of his nail. “He used to check in, but then he kinda stopped.” Mac explained, sitting up straighter and scratching the back of his neck. When he spoke again his voice was wavering ever-so-slightly. Had she not known him so well, Dee would not have been able to detect it. “Do you think he’s mad at me?” he asked, wide-eyed.

“Did you do something to make him mad?”

Mac pouted like a moody child. His thick, dark brows furrowing over his big brown puppy dog eyes. “I don’t know!” he snapped, pounding his fist on the bar in frustration. “Since when does Dennis ever need a reason to get pissed off?”

Dee snorted in spite of herself. Mac was right. Her twin was not exactly well known for his calm demeanor and rational approach to dealing with his frustration. Dennis was less predictable than a hurricane and twice as destructive. It was amazing to her that Mac was still willingly putting up with his bullshit twenty plus years later. Of course, it was blatantly obvious that Mac was stupidly in love with Dennis for reasons that Dee could not even begin to fathom.

“He’s probably just busy doing the dad thing.” Dee stated, sounding more reassuring than she had intended. Dee Reynolds was not exactly familiar with comforting anyone, especially not Mac. The truth was that Dee wanted to needle him so badly for having the poor taste to fall in love with her trashbag of a twin brother, but for some reason she just couldn’t bring herself to insult him when he already looked so damn pathetic. He reminded her of an abandoned puppy and she half expected to hear Sarah McLachlan start playing in the background. Plus, it wasn’t like there was anyone around to see her being civil, anyway. “Don’t worry about it, he’s a dick.”

“Right! Screw Dennis!” Mac exclaimed, grabbing his beer and chugging the rest with gusto. He slammed the bottle on the counter so hard that the bottom cracked slightly. He pushed himself to his feet and flexed his newly muscled arms aggressively. “When has he ever given a shit about me, anyway?” he grumbled, making his way towards the back of the bar. At the top of the basement stairs he stopped for a moment and turned back to look at her. “Thanks, Dee,” he said, clearly struggling with _thanking_ her. He was no more familiar with being kind to her than she was to him. “Don’t tell anyone I said that or I’ll clock you, you dumb bitch.”

“I would rather drink bleach.” Dee snarked and he smiled, turning away and making his way down the stairs and into the basement.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie wakes up in Dee's bed. He decides that it's time to end things with the Waitress.

_9:30 AM_

_On a Monday_

_Philadelphia, PA_

Charlie was silent the entire drive from Dee’s apartment to Paddy’s, watching the buildings flash by, blurring together into a mass of gray and brown, while he tried to digest the entire morning. He still had traces of a headache, but his hangovers always seemed to dissipate relatively quickly compared to his cohorts. Still, the cereal that he had for breakfast wasn’t sitting quite right and his stomach clenched in discomfort.

The last thing Charlie remembered from the night before was standing around a blazing trash can fire with a bunch of Frank’s bridge friends, staring out over the water. The river was sparkling under the city lights, looking beautiful and almost otherworldly, like a portal to an alternate dimension. He thought idly about diving in and seeing if he could swim into another universe. A light breeze blew out across the water, lightly lifting his mess of chestnut curls.

He was already pretty wasted, swaying on his feet, his vision going in and out of focus like a bad found footage film. One of the hobos standing next to him, a gnarly looking Hispanic man, that looked to be in his mid-sixties, with crater-like pock marks covering his dirty cheeks and diseased teeth, dark like little black beans lining is gums, pulled a glass pipe from the inside pocket of his grubby jacket and retrieved a lighter from another. He proceeded to fill the pipe with something that might have been weed, but Charlie was too faded to pay close enough attention. The crater-faced hobo lit the bowl, taking a long drag and holding his breath for a few moments before blowing a thin stream of gray smoke across the water. Charlie watched the tendrils of smoke as they drifted out over the river, catching the lights and changing colors as they dissolved into the night sky. He offered the pipe to Charlie.

 _What the hell!_ Charlie thought, shrugging. His brain was already swimming, what was another couple of tokes? He accepted the pipe and the lighter, taking a long hit. The taste of the smoke on his tongue was sweet and almost tangy. _Whatever this is, it’s definitely not just weed._ he noted, but he couldn’t bring himself care beyond that minor revelation. He _wanted_ to be as wasted as he possibly could be, short of actually dying. He wanted to escape reality. Ever since his night with the Waitress, everything had become Too Much for him to handle, especially if he was even remotely close to sober. He desperately wanted to quiet the screaming that seemed to be constantly filling his brain, drowning out his thoughts and filling him with waves of intense emotions that he could not even begin to parse through. He wanted to turn off his brain, even if only for a little while.

The high hit him suddenly and he was floating outside of his body, up into the cool night air, looking down at himself standing in the soft glow of the fire. The water was beginning to glisten, a bright ethereal mix of neon blue and white. Charlie watched the water, mesmerized, and slowly the world around him began to fall away into nothing.

When he woke up in Dee’s bed, the screaming started again.

*******

As he drifted into consciousness, Charlie became aware of the warmth of another person beside him. He knew immediately that it wasn’t Frank because his distinct scent – something like a combination of garbage and sausage – was missing and wondered how he had made it back home to his own apartment. _Fuck_. He thought, sourly. He tried to piece together what he had done last night, but he really couldn’t remember anything. Damn, it had been a while since he’d last had an actual black out, rather than browning out and remembering snatches from the night before, however incorrectly. Charlie hoped that he hadn’t done anything particularly stupid or the Waitress would be even clingier now than she already was. _She smells different._ He noted through the sick pounding that was filling his head. The Waitress typically used a cheap shampoo that smelled like wildflowers, but the scent of honey and lavender was filling his nose. He liked this scent, it was comforting. _Maybe this whole thing between the two of us won’t be so bad after all._

Charlie’s sage-colored eyes fluttered open and he glanced up at the ceiling, finding it unfamiliar. His hungover brain took a few minutes to maneuver through the jumbled pile of thoughts, stuck together in his head like wet paper, muddled and confused, as he slowly parsed together that he was not on his futon and definitely not in his apartment. The shaggy haired brunette started to panic, his heart fluttering in his chest, the beat increasing rapidly. His pulse thumped violently in his ears, making his head pound harder. Charlie gradually realized whose slender waist his arm was so casually slung over, and his heart stopped beating entirely.

_Oh, fuck._

How could he have allowed this to happen again?

The pace of his breathing quickened and he started to hyperventilate, his chest rising and falling with increased rapidity as he struggled to catch his breath. Suddenly, Charlie felt like his lungs were being crushed into mush by an invisible vise, straining to expand with oxygen. His thoughts started to morph into an unpleasant static as terror began to block out any rational thoughts he might have had. The brunette bolted upwards, already freaking out before he even opened his mouth. Unable to control the volume of his voice, he shrieked, _“Oh my God!”_

Dee jolted upright beside him, eyes wide, clearly alarmed, her back rigid with shock. She looked like hell. His long-time friend appeared sickly. Her skin was pallid, almost yellow in the harsh early morning light coming through the slats in her shades. Her straw-colored hair was disheveled, sticking out in every direction, making her look like some sort of bog witch that had risen from the depths to put a curse on his family for stealing the vegetables from her garden. Her pale blue eyes were cloudy with exhaustion, like dull aquamarines, and the deep purplish-blue bags underneath her them were so dark that they almost looked like bruises. 

Charlie could feel the panic rising in the back of his throat like bile, overwhelming him in a violent wave of dread that washed over his body, soaking him to the bone. He couldn’t remember _anything_ from the night before. He was not sure who he had been with or what he had said or done. The tousle-haired brunette was overcome with sudden nausea, his stomach twisting and roiling angrily in his gut. Charlie hated blacking out. Waking up in a strange location filled with a queasy sense of confusion brought back unpleasant memories of the horrible mornings that he would wake up to find Uncle Jack in his bed with no recollection of how he had gotten there or what had transpired.

“What the fuck, Dee?” Charlie could hear himself yelling, his voice cracking with distress, but it sounded as if it were coming through a phone with a bad connection. “Did you try to bang me again?” he shouted at her. His tone was angry, accusatory. Charlie watched as Dee’s thin eyebrows furrowed with mounting irritation, the lines in her forehead deepening. Even in the face of her growing fury, Charlie couldn’t stop himself from lashing out at her. He was too consumed by his own terror to heed the threatening flash in her cornflower-blue eyes, warning him of the impending storm that was her wrath.

Charlie ground his teeth anxiously. He could feel his heartbeat pulsating in his head, a rush of blood filling his ears. His head felt uncomfortably full and fuzzy, as if it had been filled with cotton. He opened his mouth to say something else, but Dee interrupted him before he could get another word out.

“Shut the fuck up, Charlie!” her loud squawk penetrated through the mess of thoughts hurtling through his brain and roughly snapped him back to reality. Charlie attempted to regain some composure, breathing carefully through his nose as Dee, who was clearly pissed off, detailed the situation. He was starting to feel almost calm when the intensity of his hangover hit him all at once, like a frying pan to the face, and a wave of nausea consumed him completely, forcing him to dive for the trash can.

*******

Breakfast had been awkward to say the least.

The two of them were hungover as shit, sitting at the blonde’s crappy kitchen table, struggling to choke down the watery instant coffee that Dee had spiked with Jack Daniels in order to take the edge off. To his surprise, Charlie discovered that he was actually extremely hungry, probably because he had expelled the entire content of his stomach earlier that morning. He dug into his cereal with enthusiasm, deliberately ignoring the white dots that danced across his vision.

Now that his panic had finally subsided, Charlie was keenly aware of the throbbing in his head, pounding at his temples like a jackhammer. The messy-haired brunette worked to distract himself from the sick thumping in his skull by talking to Dee, explaining to her his patented method of catching stray cats and getting them to allow him to pet them. He wasn’t totally sure if she was paying attention to what he was saying because she had a weird look on her face, almost as though she was looking through him rather than at him, but he kept on talking anyway.

Charlie felt a little bad about getting completely annihilated and imposing himself on his blonde friend during a blackout. He felt even worse for screaming at her when it turned out that she had only been helping him out. He wanted to figure out a way to make it up to her quickly. He didn’t like to owe anyone in the gang anything because they were notorious for taking advantage of each other over ridiculous favors.

“Hey Dee, I’m sorry I got so fucked up last night,” he apologized to her through a mouthful of cereal. “I didn’t say anything weird, did I?”

Dee’s eyes snapped up to his face and she blushed an ugly shade of scarlet. Her expression was pinched and she looked like she had swallowed a bug. Charlie felt his stomach drop to his toes. He must have said something really stupid to cause her to make a face like that. “N–No.” she replied, weakly. “Why do you ask?” Dee seemed like she was struggling to get her words out and Charlie wondered if she was lying to him, but he decided not to push it because he was afraid to know the answer.

He had thought that their morning was going fairly well until Dee went off on him. Charlie was more than used to dealing with Dee’s tantrums, usually tuning out her shrill voice until she had screamed herself out, but today her words hit him hard, smacking him across the face with a force that knocked him clean off his feet.

The gang thought that he was totally oblivious, but Charlie was aware that he had a problem. He knew that things with the Waitress weren’t going great, but that didn’t mean that he had made a mistake in choosing her. They were just going through a rough patch. It happened to every couple, even soulmates. Dee was completely out of line. He hadn’t wasted the past fifteen years of his life pursuing a woman who didn’t really love him back. The notion was too ridiculous to even consider. 

_Why don’t you face reality?_ Dee’s voice nagged at the back of his head like the world’s most annoying conscious. He stared out the window, trying to focus on the buildings passing by them. _What does Dee know anyway?_

*******

When they arrived at Paddy’s, Charlie forced his way past Dee, refusing to look at her and fled into the comforting solitude of the basement.

The basement was Charlie’s safe haven. The rest of the gang rarely ventured down there, disgusted by the musty smell and the rats that seemed to regenerate in masse no matter how many times he smashed them. The inner workings of the basement fell under the umbrella of Charlie Work, making it his domain. His kingdom. His sanctuary.

He didn’t mind it. He appreciated the privacy that the basement afforded him. Whenever the toxic dynamic in the gang became too much to handle, he would escape into the seclusion of the basement until his thoughts stopped raging like a tropical storm trapped in his brain.

Today, he wanted to get as far away from Dee as he possibly could.

Charlie made his way over to the corner of the basement, where he had a rusted set of supply shelves that he kept his cleaning products on. He shoved around the cleaning supplies, which were arranged in an organized chaos that only he could decipher, until he found what he was looking for. He snatched a dirty, yellowing sock lying on top of a can of wood polish and then grabbed the can of spray paint sitting next to it. _Silver, my favorite._

Charlie expelled an exhausted sigh, pushing his back against the cold concrete wall and sliding to the floor. His head had started to bang again, his brain pulsating inside of his skull like the speakers in a dance club. He shakily sprayed the paint into the dirty sock, bringing it to his mouth and inhaling deeply, tasting the sharp metallic tang of the paint on his tongue. The taste should have been awful, but instead he found it comforting and familiar.

Immediately, a warmth seeped throughout his body, traveling from his chest and down his arms to his fingers, making them tingle. It felt like he had taken the first sip of a steaming cup of hot cocoa in the dead of winter. His cheeks started to feel warm and fuzzy, his head filling with a pleasant buzz. It was a high that he knew very well, soothing in its own way, like wrapping himself in a childhood blanket.

He leaned his head back against the wall, gazing up at the ceiling. It was low and cracked with brown, foul smelling water seeping from a fissure. The majority of the lights had burned out, some had even burst, but he had seen no need to fix them. It wasn’t as if anyone else but him was ever down here to look at them.

Dee had been furious with him that morning. Furious with him in a way that felt different from her usual emotional outbursts. She never hesitated to mock others, him included, needling at obvious and superficial inadequacies like his hygiene or his illiteracy, but today she had dug the knife in deeper. She had targeted him at his core, poking at his deepest insecurities and it was stressing him out.

It was true that he had been spending a lot of time at Dee’s apartment lately, but that was just because he needed a little space from the Waitress sometimes. _That’s normal though_ , he reasoned. _Y_ _ou can’t be with someone all the time without getting a little annoyed with them sometimes, right?_ Except, he spent nearly all of his time with the gang and he didn’t ignore their calls for days on end or try to dodge them if they were trying to find him to spend time together, at least not in the same way he had been with the Waitress the past few months. Charlie had never imagined that someone like the Waitress, who had always been so aloof and snarky, could transform into someone who was clingy and possessive seemingly overnight. Charlie took another deep inhale from the grimy sock in his hand and watched as sparks danced across his vision like fireflies in the dimness of the basement.

*******

_The first time Charlie Kelly met the Reynolds twins was during the second semester of his sophomore year of high school. It was a Tuesday smack dab in the middle of February and there was just enough chill in the air that Charlie had opted to wear his battered black jacket, a thrifted number stitched together with so many patches he wasn’t sure there was any of its original material left. He was hanging out behind the cafeteria next to the dumpsters, sitting cross-legged on the concrete, his back pressed against the red brick of the building. He was nursing a battered thermos filled with the Jack Daniels that he had swiped from his mother’s not-so-secret stash._

_Ronnie kicked the door open with one of his patented karate moves and it pinged off the brick wall, nearly slamming back into his face. Charlie looked up, opening his mouth to greet him, but the words died in his throat as he watched a preppy guy follow Ronnie out the door. Charlie was more than used to Ronnie meeting his “clients” behind the cafeteria, but the kids who were clearly more well off than Charlie tended to make him feel uncomfortable. It felt like they were always judging him, unable to see past his messy brown hair, like a bird’s nest, his small stature, and stained second-hand clothes._

_Charlie recognized Dennis Reynolds by sight even though the two of them had never spoken to one another. He knew that they were on entirely different levels of the high school popularity scale. Charlie was aware that Dennis felt similarly. He had seen the way Dennis would strut around the school as if he owned the place, loudly proclaiming himself to be a Golden God. The curly-haired boy would rave endlessly about controlling his minions, which freaked Charlie out because any guy who had minions was probably one scary motherfucker. Dennis was usually in close proximity to the cooler kids in the school. Popular guys like Adriano Calvanese and Tim Murphy, the kinds of people who forced Charlie to eat bugs for laughs._

_Charlie Kelly and Dennis Reynolds existed in entirely different worlds._

_Charlie found Dennis intimidating. Dennis was everything that Charlie could never be. He was tall and good-looking, with sharp, angular features and neat curly dark hair. It was obvious that he came from money, more money than Charlie could ever conceive of having in his lifetime. He was dropped off at school every day in a luxury vehicle that Charlie had only ever seen in car commercials. Dennis was always dressed in new, expensive clothes that were flattering and impeccably clean. Meanwhile, people like Charlie and Ronnie had little choice but to wear tattered hand me downs and ill-fitting, thrifted fair._

_It was clear, even to Charlie with his limited observational skills, after watching the two of them interact for more than a few seconds that Ronnie was enamored with Dennis. His childhood pal looked at the other boy like he thought that he shit gold. He might have for all Charlie knew, he didn’t know anything about how rich people’s bodies functioned in comparison to a commoner’s body like his own, he had failed biology after all._

_“OW!” a shrill yell punctuated the chilled air and Charlie’s attention was immediately drawn back to the door. “Don’t let the door slam in my face, dickhead!” the same voice snapped viciously. Charlie watched with fascination as what instantly assumed was a robot pushed its way through the doorway and stumbled ungracefully into the frosted winter morning. After studying the creature for a few minutes, it suddenly dawned on him that it was in fact not a robot, but a girl. A tall, gangly blonde girl with long, twig-like limbs and huge hands. She was trapped in a rigid metal cage that wrapped around her chest, a steel halo encircling her head._

_“Shut up, Dee.” Dennis spat, giving her a withering look that would have cowed most teenage girls, but the metal girl was not intimidated by him in the least. She matched his look of disdain with one of her own. “Nobody even asked you to come anyway, you annoying bitch.”_

_Dee shot daggers at him, but Dennis ignored her, turning his back to her, which only served to make her more pissed off. “I’m paying for half this weed,” she snapped, bright blue eyes flashing with anger. “And this time I’m making sure that I actually get half! The last time you went alone you and Ronnie the Rat smoked all of it and all you brought me home was a bag of stems and seeds!” Dee shouted, exasperated. Her voice was sharp and piercing and ripped through the crisp air like a knife._

_Ronnie glowered at the nickname, but quickly redirected his attention back to Dennis, totally dismissing the infuriated blonde as if she were no longer there. “This is Charlie. We’ve been bros since kindergarten.” Ronnie told him, jabbing his thumb in the direction the smaller teen sitting on the ground. Charlie nodded at the Reynolds twins, holding up his thermos in way of greeting, but he didn’t bother getting to his feet. “Charlie, this is Dennis Reynolds.” Ronnie said, gesturing to the preppy boy at his side. Charlie thought that Ronnie sounded way too excited when he spoke about Dennis and he was acting more like he was introducing a crush than a client._

_“I know who Dirtgrub is.” Dennis replied, rather smugly, looking down his nose at Charlie, a cocky smirk playing around his lips. Charlie scowled up at him, his thick brown eyebrows furrowing over his emerald eyes. He could feel his cheeks heating up with embarrassment even in the frosted air. Of course, some Scrooge McDuck ass pretty boy would think of him as nothing more than a dirty little worm. He was starting to think he might not like Dennis at all. He was kind of an asshole, but Ronnie looked at him like he might really be a Golden God and Charlie didn’t want to alienate his best (possibly only) friend by telling him that he didn’t like his new rich boy pal._

_“And that’s Dennis’ twin sister, the Aluminum Monster.” Ronnie added, almost as an afterthought, motioning towards the gangly blonde._

_“It’s not the Aluminum Monster!” Dee shrieked, her hands balling into angry fists and Charlie thought for sure she was going to clock Ronnie in the nose. Instead, she clenched her eyes shut and took a deep, shaking breath. When she opened them again, she seemed more in control. “It’s Dee,” she said, her tone more amiable. She clambered over to Charlie, holding out her hand. The metal brace she was wearing kept her painfully erect, making it difficult for her to hold her hand at the correct angle for a proper handshake. Charlie smiled and reached up, grasping her hand and shaking it as best he could without toppling her over. Her hand was warm in his despite of the chill._

_Dennis watched their exchange in judgmental silence, his eyebrows arched so high they nearly blended into his hairline. He looked like he was going to add something snarky, but instead he shook his head dismissively and turned back to Ronnie, continuing their conversation as if the other two weren’t even there._

_Dee rolled her eyes and turned back to face Charlie. “Coffee?” she asked, pointing to the thermos clutched in his other hand._

_“Nah, whiskey,” he said conspiratorially, flashing her a wicked smile._

_Dee thought that his eyes looked especially green when he smiled, like chips of emerald and she felt her heart skip a beat, but she did her best to ignore it. She was more than a little aware of Charlie “Dirtgrub” Kelly’s reputation around the school. Her clout was already so low that interacting with him at all was probably a bad idea for her image. Not that it really mattered, seeing that she already hung out with the likes of Fatty Magoo._

_“Do you want some?” he asked, offering her the thermos._

_“Don’t have to ask me twice.” Dee laughed awkwardly, her voice cracking a little. She struggled to maneuver herself into a sitting position, sliding carefully down the wall and onto her folded legs. Charlie handed her the thermos and Dee uncapped it, taking a grateful swallow. Her features pinched slightly as the sharp taste of alcohol slid down the back of her throat. Nothing made the tedium of the school day go by easier than being drunk, she reasoned. Charlie was staring at her intently and she realized that she was blushing. Boys didn’t typically look at her that long unless they were planning to mock her. She held the thermos out to him._

_“So, like can you shoot lasers?” Charlie asked finally, looking at her with wide, inquisitive eyes. He took the thermos from Dee and gulped down a generous amount of booze. Dee looked at him like he suddenly sprouted an additional head from his neck._

_“What?”_

_“You’re like a cyborg, right?” he questioned, starting to get excited. Charlie was positive that he had figured it out. She was obviously at least part human and not fully robotic, so that ruled out an android, meaning that a cyborg of some sort was the clear answer. “Like, you’re not a robot, but you’re still part machine, right?” he continued, speaking quickly. “So, can you shoot lasers like those Japanese robot shows?” the messy-haired brunette asked her, eagerly. He looked at her face to find that Dee was glaring at him like she might bite his head clean off and Charlie’s voice died in his throat. He felt suddenly self-conscious. “Am I wrong?” he asked, sheepishly. He was wrong about a lot of things. Charlie knew that he wasn’t the smartest person in the world. It didn’t usually embarrass him, even when people poked fun at him for it, but for some reason he kind of wanted Dee to like him._

_“I’m not a cyborg, dumbass.” Dee snapped, snatching the thermos from him and taking another long pull. She frowned at him, her brows drawing together in frustration. “I have a spine problem. I have to wear this brace to fix it.” Dee explained, her tone a little gentler. She handed Charlie back the thermos, which was nearly empty at this point._

_“Ohhh,” Charlie said. He did not totally understand what she was saying, but he decided to pretend that he could anyway. He realized that he was looking at her face again. Up close, he could see the resemblance to her brother in her features: the soft hair, the slender upturned nose, the smooth peaches and cream complexion, and impossibly pink lips. If you looked past all the metal, she was actually really pretty. He wondered for a moment if anyone had ever told her so, but he doubted it. He knew from bitter experience that people could rarely look past the surface. Dee met his gaze and smiled, her face was flushed with alcohol and her cheeks were tinted red from the chill of the air. Charlie felt his stomach clench uncomfortably, flipping around inside him like an eel and he was at a loss for words. He settled on smiling back._

_“Dee, let’s go.” Dennis’ impatient voice snapped both of them back to reality, popping the small bubble that had formed around them during their conversation. In fact, Charlie had nearly forgotten that they weren’t alone._

_He watched as Dee struggled to get back on her feet, a little more unsteady now than when she had been when sat down thanks to the healthy amount of booze coursing through her system. “Okay,” she mumbled and started to follow her twin brother into the building. She stopped in the doorway, turning back to look down at Charlie. “Thanks for the whiskey, Dirtgrub.” Dee said, giving him a sly little wink, and he nodded, still smiling. He watched as the door close behind them._

_Automatically, Ronnie spun on his heel to face him. “Isn’t Dennis so cool?” he gushed and Charlie swore he could see cartoon hearts floating around his head. He wondered if Ronnie had noticed them too. “Do you think he thinks I’m cool?” he asked, clearly anxious._

_“Sure, man.” Charlie reassured his friend, rolling his eyes when Ronnie turned his back to him. He was hopeful that Dennis Reynolds would not become a fixture in their lives because he could honestly live without the guy. He seemed like a prick._

_“Yeah, you’re right.” Ronnie agreed, puffing out his chest. “Of course, he thinks I’m cool. I’m a total badass!” he reassured himself loudly, proceeding to do a terrible spinning kick and slamming his foot into the side of the dumpster with a loud, metallic clang. He hopped on one foot for a few moments, clutching the other and expelling a long string of muttered curses. Finally, Ronnie returned his focus to Charlie, who was rapidly beginning to feel too drunk to move from his spot on the concrete. “Thanks for talking to the Aluminum Monster for me, dude,” he added. “She’s such an annoying bitch, right?” Ronnie prodded, observing Charlie expectantly, clearly waiting for him to agree with his assessment._

_“Oh! Um, yeah.” Charlie agreed, deliberately not making eye contact. He never really knew what to say when girls came up in conversation with Ronnie. The two of them were both awkward and unpopular – no matter what Ronnie might have thought about himself – so they were not exactly swimming in pussy. And even though his friend liked to characterize himself as a womanizer, he seemed to find the vast majority of girls annoying and unappealing. Ronnie would always get a sour look on face whenever Charlie would try to bring up any of the girls in their classes. “She’s a total bitch,” he added for good measure and Ronnie laughed._

_But Charlie was still thinking about her smile._

*******

Charlie heard footsteps and looked up to see Mac descending the stairs into the basement.

“Hey, dude.” Mac greeted him casually, hopping over the last couple of stairs and landing roughly on the concrete. “Glad to see you didn’t die last night,” he said, although his tone was more noncommittal than concerned. “I’m surprised you’re even standing, bro. You were totally wasted when you left,” he laughed heartily, and Charlie suddenly felt the need to take another metallic huff of spray paint.

“Yeah, I managed to get home.” Charlie muttered, trying his damnedest to avoid revealing any emotion on his face. He realized with sudden embarrassment that he had accidentally referred to Dee’s apartment as “home” but he decided instantaneously that he didn’t even want to even begin to deal with the implications of that verbal slip-up, so he decided to run with the lie. It was better this way. Nobody needed to know that he had spent the night at Dee’s place, especially not that he had slept with her in her actual bed with his arm wrapped around her.

“To the Waitress?” Mac asked him curiously, his eyebrow quirking inquisitively. The question was natural, Mac knew that Frank had essentially moved in with Dee and Charlie had been spending longer and longer amounts of time away from his own apartment and by extension, the Waitress. Suddenly, Charlie’s mouth felt dry and sticky and he desperately wanted a beer. He thought momentarily about slipping upstairs to grab one, but quickly quashed the idea when he remembered that he would have to go past Dee to get it. _Whatever_ , he thought. After he finished talking with Mac, he would dig around the shelves and see if he had squandered away any emergency booze in one of the bleach containers that lined the bottom shelf. He should probably take the time to label those at some point.

“Y–Yeah,” Charlie stammered his agreement, swiftly dropping the other man’s gaze to stare at his own hands. He pretended to be interested in reading the text on the back of the can of spray paint in his hand, even though they both knew that he couldn’t actually decipher it. “She was really sweet,” he lied. “Took care of me and shit. She’s the best.” Charlie said quickly, hoping that the truth wasn’t written all over his face. Being the best of friends since childhood, Mac had become accustomed to reading Charlie and could easily tell when the latter was lying. That was, at least, when he put the effort into actually paying attention to Charlie’s behavior. However, Mac was prone to ignoring those around him whenever he became fixated on something self-gratifying, which had allowed Charlie to slide more than a few falsehoods past him over the years.

Mac frowned, crossing his beefy arms over his broad chest. “That doesn’t sound like the Waitress I know,” he replied, matter-of-factly.

Charlie groaned internally.

Deep down inside, he knew that Mac wasn’t really wrong about her. The Waitress had never been an especially kind or caring person, particularly towards him. Charlie had always thought that her harsh behavior was a guise, that she was playing hard to get. But now that he had actually gotten her, he wasn’t so sure about that anymore. He looked up at Mac and worked to meet his gaze. “She’s totally in love with me now, dude.” he insisted, grinning weakly. A cruel part of him wondered who he was really trying to convince. “It’s kind of pathetic.” he scoffed, desperately hoping that Mac will drop the subject.

“Yeah, hit it and quit it. That’s my motto!” Mac laughed, but it sounded weird and forced. He ran his fingers through his flawlessly styled pompadour anxiously. In the same ways that Mac understood Charlie and could read his moods, Charlie had known his friend long enough to recognize when something was bothering him. He was dense, but he would have had to have been completely blind not to realize what the underlying issue really was: Mac hadn’t been the same since Dennis had left Philadelphia over ten months ago. It was like the fire inside him had been abruptly snuffed out, leaving him a shadow of his former self. He still acted like the same gregarious asshole, but much of his enthusiasm felt performative. Charlie hadn’t sought him out or pushed him to talk about Dennis leaving, that wasn’t the way that the two of them functioned. He knew that Mac would come to him if he really wanted to say something about it.

Mac had never actually said it out loud, at least not in front of Charlie, but it didn’t take a genius to suss out that he was madly in love with Dennis Reynolds. He had suspected it from the first day that Mac had introduced Charlie to Dennis that chilly morning out behind the cafeteria building. Friends did not look at friends the way Mac looked at Dennis. Charlie had never bothered pointing it out because he felt that it wasn’t really his business and until very recently, the mere mention of his sexual orientation would cause Mac to fly into a rage. Charlie wondered idly if it would be any different now that he was finally out of the closet. Would he admit it?

“What’s up, bro?” Charlie asked.

“Nothing, really,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Just had to get away from Dee. She’s such an annoying bitch.” Mac made a noise that Charlie thought was supposed to be a laugh, but it came out sounding more like a bark. “I was just thinking that since Dennis went to North Dakota, I’ve taken on a lot of his responsibilities around the bar, and it’s kinda getting in the way of some of my security duties.” Mac explicated. His voice sounded strained when he talked about Dennis, but he muscled through it. “I’m not giving up my position as Head of Security, obviously, but I was thinking that it might be a good idea to recruit an extra bouncer,” he explained. Charlie nodded, considering the idea. It would be nice to have some extra help around the bar. Mac was right that they had been overworked since Dennis had left the state, struggling to divide his work amongst themselves, which had been complicated further when Frank outright refused to do any sort of work beyond what he had already been doing, which was next to nothing.

“Okay, that’s not a bad idea.” Charlie acquiesced. “Are you going to put out an ad or something?”

Mac shook his head. “Nah, that’ll take too long,.” he told him, waving him off dismissively. “I was going to head over to the gym and scope out the talent.”

In spite of himself, Charlie burst into laughter, dropping his grimy sock to the floor. Charlie wanted to be angry with his childhood friend, because this was clearly a ploy so that Mac could go perv on beefcakes at the local gym, but it was too funny to actually piss him off. “You just want to check out guys!” Charlie giggled, pointing an accusatory finger at the other man. Mac blushed darkly, his face starting to resemble a tomato. He tried to interrupt Charlie’s endless guffaws in order to defend himself, but he was sputtering and having difficulty stringing together enough words to make a proper comeback. Charlie laughed harder, clutching his side. His head was starting to pound again, but he couldn’t stop himself.

“I’m the only one who has experience in security, Charlie!” Mac protested, quickly going on the defensive. “I can use my ocular assessment skills to decide which guys have the right juice to work at the bar!” he insisted, trying to shout over Charlie’s incessant laughter, which had finally begun to slow from a cackling roar into a trickle of giggles.

“Fine, fine.” Charlie answered in between chuckles, waving his hand at the other man flippantly. “Are we headed over now?” he asked, pushing himself to stand and patting the dust off of his jeans. He tried to wipe the spray paint off of his mouth with the back of his hand, but instead he accidentally made the entire situation worse by smearing the silvery paint into his facial hair and up his cheek. He would have to try and scrub it off in the men’s bathroom before they left for the gym.

“Nah,” Mac interrupted him, holding a hand up to Charlie’s face. “Frank isn’t here yet, so I need you to stay here with Dee.” he told him. “You know that we can’t trust her here alone, she’d wreck the place.”

Charlie flushed, his desire to laugh suddenly evaporating in an instant. The humming in his head returned, gaining momentum, like a thousand hornets buzzing around his ears. The smaller man scavenged his brain for an excuse, any possible way that he could escape this situation, but he was coming up blank. _The paint usually helps me think better._ he thought, resentfully. He studied Mac’s expression. He looked determined, excited to pursue his newest scheme and deep down, Charlie knew that it wouldn’t have been worth it to try and stand up to Mac. It would only end up with him getting bowled over by the other man, the same way that it had been ever since they were children. He sighed deeply, “Fine.”

“Thanks, dude!” Mac replied happily, clapping Charlie hard on the back. Charlie watched as his friend turned his back to him bounded back up the stairs like an excited puppy.

*******

Charlie did his best to avoid Dee.

When he finally left the basement, he rushed directly into the men’s bathroom as fast as his legs would allow him, blatantly refusing to even glance in her direction. To her credit, Dee made no effort to try and engage him either.

Once he was safely in the solace of the empty restroom, Charlie expelled a tired sigh, his shoulders slumping in exhaustion. It was barely two in the afternoon and he already felt completely drained, both physically and emotionally. There wasn’t enough silver spray paint in the world to help him right now. He contemplated just laying down on the floor and taking a nap, but quickly reasoned that it was probably not his best idea, considering that he hadn’t bothered cleaning the tile recently.

Charlie studied his reflection in the grimy bathroom mirror. _God, I look like shit_. he thought, frowning at his mirror image. He looked like he was half dead. His chestnut hair was disheveled, sticking out in every direction, making him look as if he had been electrocuted. His skin was way too pale, even for someone who lived in Philadelphia. He resembled a vampire. Charlie’s usually striking green eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with red. They were vacant and glazed over with exhaustion. He noticed the wrinkles pulling at the corners of his eyes. They had become more visible recently, a nagging reminder that he was getting older, that he wasn’t in his twenties anymore. Charlie was entering his forties. He was an honest to god adult now. He wished that he actually felt like one.

His nose and mouth were still wreathed in shiny, silver spray paint. Charlie sighed, turning on the water in the sink and filling his hand with several pumps of hand soap. He started scrubbing at his mouth and beard vigorously, trying to clean off the paint, but it was proving to be stubborn. Charlie felt like an idiot. He was not typically embarrassed of his behavior. Since he considered himself to the be the gang’s Wild Card, he felt that his life was meant to be dangerous and unpredictable. But lately, being the Wild Card had not been nearly as fun. Instead, it had become tiresome and stressful.

After he managed to remove the majority of the paint, Charlie turned off the faucet and rubbed his face dry with his shirt. He decided to forget about his impending existential crisis and focus on cleaning the bathroom.

Charlie grabbed his bucket of cleaning supplies and made his way into the nearest stall, getting to his knees, feeling the chill of the linoleum through the knees of his worn-out jeans. He dumped a liberal amount of bleach into the toilet and started to clean, scrubbing the bowl so hard that his fingers started to hurt. The chemical fumes started to fill his nostrils, making his brain ache, and not in the usual satisfying way. His eyes burned and his tongue felt heavy, too big for his mouth, but he ignored the irritating sensation, focusing on the task at hand. 

The short brunette fell easily into the routine of cleaning. It was second nature to him at this point in his life. The torrent of thoughts swirling around in his head evened out into a blank expanse, wandering idly from subject to subject without too much focus on a single topic. Eventually, his mind drifted to the Waitress, who he knew was waiting for him at home at his – their – apartment. He planned to work things out with her as soon as possible. As soon as they talked, everything would be fine between them and their life could move forward as planned. Charlie knew that everyone was wrong about her. She wasn’t annoying or controlling or a bitch, she was just a little clingy. That kind of possessiveness was a display of affection, right?

_Right?_

*******

After he left the bar that night, Charlie found himself wandering the city streets in a haze.

His head was still filled with an incessant buzzing, his thoughts pinging around inside his brain like a bug trapped in a jar, colliding into and ricocheting off of one another like the plastic balls inside of a lottery machine. He needed to calm down and find a way to clear his head. The toxic fumes from his plethora of cleaning products combined with the monotony of janitorial work had failed to do the trick the way they usually did.

Charlie had spent hours cleaning the bar in a daze, mulling over how to approach his problem with the Waitress and he still had not managed to come up with a decent plan of action. He knew that he had to go home tonight. He had not slept in his own apartment the past couple of nights. Hell, he had been wearing the same tee shirt for the last two days and it wasn’t even his shirt; it had belonged to some hook up of Dee’s who had abandoned it at her apartment. She had given it to him a couple of days ago when he had spilled taco sauce all over himself when he had come over to spend yet another night on her couch.

It was not as though the Waitress had not been trying to contact him. She had called and texted him tons of times, but he had ignored every one of them. Charlie wasn’t sure if she realized that he couldn’t actually read the texts that she sent him, but he guessed that they were in the same vein as the dozens voice mails filling his inbox: _Where are you? Why won’t you answer your phone? When are you coming home?_

Charlie found himself standing in front of a worn-out tenement building in one of the worst neighborhoods in Philly. He realized with a sudden jolt that he had walked all the way to the Waitress’ old apartment building, the place that she had lived before she was forced to move into the women’s shelter. He had somehow made his way there on instinct, a habit he had likely acquired through his years of stalking. Charlie stared up at what used to be her window. It was dark. It didn’t look like anyone new had moved in since she left.

From his spot in the alley across the street from the brown brick building, the Waitress had looked beautiful, ethereal. She was an angel, sent from heaven to bless him. A gorgeous waif sheathed in her glowing halo of flaxen locks. To Charlie, the Waitress was a Goddess. Pure, exquisite, and untouchable.

_So, what had gone wrong?_

He had touched her. He had dragged his innocent angel down to the earth and turned her into a run of the mill, average human. The Waitress was no longer an unattainable fantasy, a prop in his elaborate imaginary world. And now that he had forcibly ripped off the veil forged from his fantasies and exposed her; her real self was finally coming into focus. Charlie was finally able to view her as she truly was, a human tainted with all of her human flaws. The worst part was that Charlie did not seem to like who she was.

Suddenly, Charlie felt nauseous.

*******

Charlie stood in the hallway in front of the door to his apartment, staring at the wood, unable to enter. His heart was palpating wildly and his body felt like a giant bundle of anxious nerves. He slid the key into the lock and closed his eyes tightly, taking a long, slow breath to steady himself. Finally, he unlocked the door and gripped the handle tightly, pushing it open.

The Waitress was stretched out on the futon, which was still in the form of a bed, fiddling with her phone. When he entered the apartment, she looked up at him and her face melted into a warm smile. Charlie felt a twinge of guilt. He had spent years fantasizing about her smiling at him like that, but now that she was, he discovered that her smile did not fill him with the same bubbling happiness that it had in his daydreams.

“Charlie!” she exclaimed excitedly, hopping up and trotting over to him, phone in hand. “It’s been two days!” she cried, throwing her arms around him and pulling him into her, planting a wet kiss on his cheek. “I called you like, a million times.”

“Forgot my charger,” he lied, carefully extricating himself from her grasp. He glanced around the apartment with a growing sense of unease.

The apartment looked different. Everything felt wrong. He realized that all of the cans of cat food had disappeared. In fact, there were no signs of any cats at all. The room was absent the characteristic scent of cat urine. There were no friendly strays wandering throughout the apartment, lounging on the couch or scratching at the peeling wood on the door. His sink buddies were gone. There wasn’t even any cat hair on the furniture. 

Nearly all of his artwork had been taken down. In place of his paintings, there were fresh swatches of different paint colors on the walls. He noticed that his favorite easy chair, a plastic beach chair that he and Frank had found during a trip to the dump, was no longer there.

“Where’d my chair go?” he asked, not really recognizing the sound of his own voice as he circled the empty space where it used to be.

“It was a nasty piece of junk covered in bird shit, I trashed it!” the Waitress replied with a shrug. When she saw the expression on his face, she frowned at him. Her sharp blue eyes narrowed dangerously, warning him of an impending explosion. “It would be dangerous when we have a baby, it would probably get tetanus.”

Charlie’s thick brows furrowed, the lines in his forehead deepening. The Waitress that he knew wouldn’t trash his prized possessions. “What about all the cat food?” he inquired, frowning deeply. When she moved in, Charlie had explained to her about how eating the cat food before bed was the best way to get to sleep; she had been grossed out at first, but he had thought that she had gotten over it and considered the subject to be closed. He had never expected that she would actually throw out perfectly good cat food.

“I tossed it. We won’t need it anymore,” the Waitress replied, anger beginning to edge into her voice. “If everything goes well, there shouldn’t be nearly as many cats around soon.” She tossed her bottle-blonde hair over her shoulder in agitation and he could see that she was starting to get tired of this line of questioning.

“What? Why?”

“I called Animal Control.” the Waitress explicated, “They should start clearing them out in a couple of days.” She glowered at Charlie, clearly becoming more and more frustrated with his stupidity.

“ _WHAT!?_ ” Charlie screeched, unable to control the volume of his voice. “They’ll kill them!” he cried, panicked. The composure that he had tried to gather in the hallway was starting to crack and he ran anxious fingers through his hair, emerald eyes darting around the room, looking anywhere but her face. “Why would you do that?” He felt like he was going to burst into tears. The alley cats were a part of him. How could his Waitress be so cruel?

The Waitress looked confused. She crossed her arms across her chest, holding herself tightly, as though she was protecting herself from him. “Charlie, I don’t understand what the problem is,” she squeaked and Charlie was suddenly very aware of how grating her voice was, high-pitched and whiny like a metal fork scraping across a porcelain dish. He glared at her, his gaze icy, and she flinched away from him. “It’s just a bunch of stray cats, Charlie.” she insisted, “They don’t matter.”

“ _THEY DON’T MATTER!?_ ” he shouted in utter disbelief, shaking dust from the ceiling and she recoiled as though he had burned her with his blistering anger. Charlie had the visceral urge to slap her across the face. His Goddess had revealed herself to be a monster and all he wanted to do was scream and scream. His head was starting to spin and everything was quickly becoming too much to handle. Too loud. Too bright.

“C–Charlie, you’re scaring me,” she whimpered, backing toward the kitchen.

“What the hell is wrong with you? Were you always such a heartless goddamned bitch?” he spat, venom dripping from his words. Abruptly, her look of fear began to dissipate and was quickly replaced with one of derision. The Waitress glowered at him, sparks shooting from her crystal blue eyes. She stood up tall, squaring her shoulders and puffing out her chest.

“ _Excuse me!?_ ” The Waitress snapped, her voice cracking in anger. He thought that she sounded like a boat whistle, piercing and overwhelming. “ _You’re_ the one who has a weird boner for a bunch of alley cats!” she snarked, her tone harsh.

“ _AUUGHH!_ ” Charlie bellowed, ripping at his hair in frustration. He was only mildly conscious of the burning sensation as he tore some of it from his scalp, too overwhelmed emotionally to be aware of any physical pain. “ _This is so fucked up! This is so fucked up!_ ” Charlie whined, almost chanting. He started to pace back and forth across the length of the tiny apartment, utterly incapable of keeping still. The screaming in his head was quickly reaching a fever pitch and all he could hear was the pounding of his blood in his ears.

“You’re damn right it is!” the Waitress was yelling now too, attempting to scream over him. She was trying to grind him into the ground with sheer willpower and trample him, the same way everyone else in his life did. “ _You’re_ the one who asked me to live with you! _You’re_ the one who spent the last fifteen years stalking me and ruining my fucking life!” she screamed, spittle flying from her lips. She scowled at him, her gaze sharp and withering. “Who the fuck do you think you are, Charlie Kelly!?”

“ _Get out!_ ” he shrieked, easily topping her volume. Some of the cats outside in the alley began to yowl, disturbed by the noise. A part of him wanted to join them in their somber, animalistic cries.

The Waitress blinked, dumbfounded. She was clearly surprised that he was fighting back even after she had lashed out. _How did this happen?_ The perfect world that he had spent so long constructing was rapidly falling apart around him. He had finally gotten his dream girl and yet everything was so, so wrong. He had taken a bite of the perfect, red apple only to find it rotten and filled with worms. He wanted her to leave.

“What are you–”

“Just get out!” Charlie yelled, practically begging her. “Get a hotel on Frank’s card, I don’t give a shit, just please leave,” he pleaded, his voice hoarse from screaming. He couldn’t see her face anymore through the sheen of tears that were clouding his vision.

The Waitress was speechless. She gaped at him, opening and closing her mouth like a beached fish. After over a decade of playing cat and mouse, the game was finally over and neither of them could quite believe that Charlie was the one who was ending it.

They shared a long silence, staring at one another. The only sounds filling the apartment were the ones that were filtering up through the open window. To Charlie, it felt as if he was seeing her for the very first time. She wasn’t a Goddess, but she wasn’t a devil either. She was just a woman. A woman with a messed up life and an alcohol problem. Most of all, he had finally realized that she was not the _right_ woman and that it might be time to finally let her go.

She took a few minutes to quietly collect her things. Charlie observed her in silence. He did not move to help her, so overwhelmed by the gravity of his feelings in that moment that he was rooted to the ground.

“Bye, Charlie,” she said, walking past him and opening the door.

“Bye,” he whispered, watching the door click shut behind her. It was then that Charlie realized that couldn’t remember her name.

As soon as the Waitress left, Charlie sank to his knees on the grimy floor of his apartment and let the tears he had been desperately holding back overtake him. He buried his face in his hand as loud, anguished sobs wracked his tiny body. It was as if a dam inside him had burst and years and years of emotions were suddenly spilling out of him in a rush and he couldn’t control the flow.

Charlie did not know how long he cried.

When he no longer had any tears left to shed, he expelled a tired sigh and shakily pushed himself to his feet. He wiped his wet eyes with the back of his hand and blew his nose into the hem of his shirt. He padded over to the futon and shoved his arm into the crevice, fishing around until his fingers wrapped around a bottle. _Oh, thank fuck._ he thought, pulling a half full bottle of Colt 45 out of the crevice like an alcoholic Mary Poppins. He unscrewed the cap and throwing his head back, chugged half of the contents of the bottle in one go.

Charlie was exhausted and emotionally drained. He sat down hard on the futon; the bottle of booze gripped loosely in his hand. In spite of the fact that his vision was already beginning to blur slightly, he felt like everything was coming into focus. After years of blindness he could finally see what had been right in front of him all along: The Waitress didn’t really understand him. She never had. She didn’t like the same things he did. She hated the _Thundergun_ movies and she thought Nightcrawlers was dumb. She didn’t appreciate his musical genius or his def poetry. She had wanted him to throw out the bird with teeth that his friends had made him when they thought it was his birthday. She had even called it weird and creepy. How had it taken him so long to realize that they weren’t a good fit? _Because you built her into something she wasn’t, you dumb fuck._ he chastised himself, taking another long swallow of malt liquor.

“Dee was right.” Charlie said out loud, placing the nearly empty bottle between his legs and massaging his temples with calloused fingers. “I wasn’t facing reality.”

At the thought of Dee, he felt a pang of guilt. He had screamed at her this morning, calling her a heartless bitch. Sure, she had been being nasty towards him, but that didn’t mean that she was in the wrong. He had been being stubborn and stupid. Dee was more than used to the gang’s abuse. She tolerated a constant stream of insults from the four of them, usually dishing them back rapid fire, but he had really hurt her this time. Charlie had seen that flash of pain in her eyes when she stared him down. In the moment, he had been thrilled that he managed to wound her, he reveled in it, but now he just felt ashamed.

Suddenly, Charlie needed to see her.

It might have been the malt liquor clouding his judgement, but he needed to make everything right. He knew that wouldn’t be able to rest unless he fixed things this instant. Charlie was aware that he was being impulsive, but he didn’t care. With a fresh wave of determination, he leapt to his feet, downing the rest of his 40 and throwing the empty bottle onto the futon so roughly it bounced off of the mattress and shattered on the kitchen floor. Charlie ignored it, running out of his apartment like a shot, forgetting to shut the door behind him. He considered going back to lock up the apartment, but decided that it didn’t really matter, since they didn’t have shit worth stealing anyway.

*******

Dee was stretched across her tiny couch, sprawled out like a cat in a sunbeam. She was half watching a true crime documentary about some serial killer who cut off women’s toes and made them into necklaces. She thought idly that the murderer looked a little bit like a redheaded version of her brother.

A rapid pounding drew her attention to the door.

Dee picked her phone up off the coffee table, glancing at the time on the screen. It was well past two in the morning. It was probably Frank, looking to kick her out of her bed again. She thought about just ignoring the knocking, but whoever was would not stop pounding on the door. She groaned, pushing herself up off the couch and making her way towards the door, yelling. “I’m coming, shithead! Shut the fuck up!” she yelled. “It’s two in the goddamn morning!” she griped, unlocking the door and pulling it open. Her insults died in her throat when she was who it was. Charlie Kelly was standing in her hallway, smiling at her with that stupidly adorable smile of his.

_Fuck._

He held out a pizza box and a six pack of beer to her, a proverbial olive branch. “Can I come in?” he asked, shyly. Dee thought about slamming the door in his face, but when he looked at her with those eyes, those pathetic little puppy dog eyes, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, Dee made a production of letting him in, releasing a loud, annoyed sigh and dramatically crossing her arms over her chest, but she still stepped to the side. Charlie grinned, his face lighting up.

Charlie strolled into her apartment and plopped down on her couch without aplomb. He set the pizza and beer on the coffee table and glanced up at her, smiling. He patted the empty seat beside him. Any other time, Dee would have been annoyed with him for acting like he owned the place, but she was beyond exhausted today. The two of them had already spent the morning screaming at each other and she was worn out. Over the years, she had learned that being angry all of the time was taking a toll on her. She was completely drained. Dee sighed again, shutting the door behind them and making her way back to the couch, sitting down next to Charlie. He turned to face her.

“Do you wanna watch a movie?” he asked her. He shoved his hand in the pocket of his battered army jacket and pulled out a DVD case. Dee frowned. _How fucking big are the pockets on men’s coats, anyway?_ she wondered, somewhat jealous. “I brought Rocky,” he told her, showing her the cover. Dee felt a vein in her forehead begin to throb with irritation. Was he just going to pretend their argument in the morning hadn’t happened? That wouldn’t be entirely out of character for either of them, to simply “forget” about something painful or upsetting. To “just move past it.” Charlie seemed much more cheerful than he had been that morning, but she saw something lingering beneath his smile. He was holding something back.

Dee reached up, placing her hands over his and lowering them slowly. “Charlie,” she said, her tone uncharacteristically soft. “Why are you here?” she inquired. She watched face fall and he dropped his gaze guiltily.

“I broke up with her,” he murmured, refusing to make eye contact. Her eyes widened in surprise.

“Are you serious?” the blonde questioned, her voice coming out in more of an anxious squawk than the cool indifference that she had been going for. He nodded. Dee squeezed his hands unconsciously.

“You were right. She’s a bitch.” Charlie admitted, his cheeks reddening a little in embarrassment. He was not totally accustomed to apologizing. None of them were. “She tried to get all the cats in the alley ethanized,” he explained, frowning deeply. He was still extremely upset about the cats. Charlie hoped that he could figure out a way to deal with Animal Control and wondered momentarily how many cats could reasonably fit into his apartment at one time.

“Do you mean euthanized?” Dee asked.

“Yeah, that,” he agreed, still peering around the room instead of at her face. Charlie bit his lower lip and moved his hand, lacing his fingers with hers. Dee was taken aback, but she tried not to let it show on her face. “So, you were right.” Charlie repeated quickly, letting out an awkward, wheezy laugh. “I’m sorry I was such a tool,” he apologized, letting go of her hands hastily.

Dee was silent for a moment, taking everything in. She carefully thought over her response. Her initial instinct was to take this opportunity to gloat and force him beg on his knees for her forgiveness. However, there was something in his voice that was so sincere that it quashed her vindictiveness and made her want to respond in kind. “Thanks, Charlie.” Dee said, finally.

He nodded, blushing a deep crimson that spread to the roots of his messy hair. For a fraction of an instant, Dee realized that she thought that Charlie was very cute when he was embarrassed, but she squashed that thought as quickly as it occurred. The brunette shook his head roughly, as if he were trying to shake off his embarrassment like a wet bear shaking water off his fur. When he turned back to look at Dee, he was back to his regular self. “So, pizza and Stallone?” he asked, hopefully. Dee gave him a small smile, turning to flip open the pizza box and grabbing a slice. She noticed that Charlie had gotten pepperoni and olives, her favorite.

Charlie hopped off the couch and went over to the television, popping the DVD into the player. He returned to his spot next to her, tugging one of the beers from the six pack and popping the tab. He held it out to Dee, who took it, drinking gratefully.

As the movie began, they settled into a comfortable silence. Dee glanced over at the shorter man to her left. She was happy that he apologized. Admittedly, there was definitely still a part of her that was dying to rub his face in it. To drill into him with I told you so’s, but this was also nice. When it was just the two of them, Dee felt less pressure to perform, to argue, to berate. She would never admit to it, but being with Charlie was easy, comfortable even. The thought made her queasy with embarrassment.

Charlie looked more relaxed than she has seen him in weeks. His body language was laidback and casual. He was talking animatedly, his green eyes shimmering in the bluish glow of the television. In their close proximity, Dee could clearly see the peppering of freckles across his nose and cheeks. His chestnut hair was as disheveled as ever and she felt the distinct urge to wind her fingers through his locks. _God, I am losing my fucking mind._

Dee wondered if she should tell Charlie everything that had happened the night before. There was a piece of her that wanted him to know that he had confessed his love to her, even inebriated, but something held her back. A fear of rejection, maybe? _No, that’s stupid._ Dee chided herself, internally. It wasn’t like she wanted Charlie to tell her that it was more than some drunken confession and he actually loved her. She was just having an off day.

Suddenly, she needed to be sloshed. She tossed back the rest of her beer and snatched a second can. Dee let out a loud belch.

Charlie laughed, “Good one, Dee,” he complimented, taking a bite of pizza. “That’s what I like about you, Dee. You’re a girl, but you don’t get all worked up over gross stuff,” he snickered. Her cheeks began to heat up and she thanked the semi-darkness for shielding her face. It was a weird compliment, but a very Charlie one. A small smile crossed her features, in spite of herself. The two of them returned their attention to the movie.

About forty odd minutes and several beers later, they were both buzzed and sleepy. Charlie stretched out and scooted closer to Dee on the couch, leaning his head onto her shoulder. They were both drunk enough that Dee reasoned that any affection from him was probably a result of the alcohol in his system. Charlie could be a cuddly drunk and they had been in this situation a few times before. It meant nothing.

Her fingers drifted up the back of his head, entwining in his shaggy hair. _God, his hair is so fucking soft._ Dee thought. How dare someone who probably used dish soap as shampoo have such silky, soft hair?

Charlie didn’t push her away. Instead, he sighed contentedly, closing his eyes.

Dee didn’t say anything, afraid that speaking might break the spell. She carded her fingers through Charlie’s hair, listening to the soft sounds of his breathing long after the credits had rolled and the screen had faded to blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not a fan of Charlie and the Waitress as a couple in the slightest, but I felt like they deserved a decent break-up scene. The Waitress isn't a bad person, she's just someone whose life was decimated by the gang. Maybe her and Cricket should meet up, they could bond over the mutual destruction of their lives by a group of assholes in a bar.
> 
> I really like the idea that Charlie did not like Dennis when he met him because Dennis was such a smug, rich asshole in school. Charlie probably thought that he was the type of rich to eat dragon. Clearly, I am including hints of Mac/Dennis in this story, but they are most definitely the beta couple and do not get a lot of time developing their relationship. However, please enjoy baby Mac drooling all over Dennis.
> 
> The timeline in this story is sketchy because I am shit at timelines. Forgive me that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie gets hurt and Dee helps him out.

_10:45 AM_

_On a Tuesday_

_Philadelphia, PA_

Dee woke up the next morning with a terrible crick in her neck.

It took her a few moments to orient to the fact that she was awake, and another few moments for her to ascertain that she was sleeping on her couch again and not in her bed. She groaned internally, she could have gotten some sleep on a real mattress and she had passed out on her shitty loveseat again. Dee’s neck was propped against the faded, once dark brown armrest at an uncomfortable angle and it was so stiff that it felt like someone was jamming an icepick into the base of her neck. She was overheated and sweaty, like she was sleeping next to a furnace. A few wayward strands of blonde hair were stuck to her forehead and cheeks. Something heavy was pinning her down, trapping her, and she was unable to adjust herself to get more comfortable.

Dee struggled to open her eyes, which were crusted shut. She had clearly forgotten to remove her make-up the night before and her mascara had congealed, cementing her eyelashes together. She wrenched her bright blue eyes open and found herself face to face with Charlie Kelly for the second time in two days. _Oh, goddamn it._

Dee could not even remember falling asleep the night before. She vaguely remembered her and Charlie polishing off a seemingly endless supply of beer and enough pizza to leave her feeling bloated and exhausted. She reasoned that the two of them must have passed out partway through _Rocky_ , probably while they were arguing over whether or not using frozen meat as a punching bag was more or less efficient than using a traditional vinyl punching bag.

Charlie was lying mostly on top of her, though some of his wiry body was lodged into the crevice of her couch, his head resting gently on her shoulder. One of his arms was slung across her narrow waist, holding her close to his body, the way a lover might. The brunette’s legs were sticking out at unnatural angles, hanging awkwardly over the side of the opposite armrest of her miniscule sofa. How they had managed to contort themselves into that position Dee could not even begin to imagine. She wriggled beneath him. In spite of his small stature, Charlie was dead weight and wouldn’t budge. She was hopelessly pinned underneath his body

She expelled a long, exhausted sigh and began tapping Charlie lightly on the temple. Dee did not want to startle him awake, the last thing she needed was a repeat of yesterday morning. Thankfully, she was starting her morning with a much milder hangover than the day before. Charlie’s eyes slowly fluttered open and his striking green gaze came into focus. Their eyes locked and Dee watched as comprehension dawned on his face before his expression quickly morphed into one of shock and horror. 

“Oh, shit!” Charlie yelped, leaping backward and off of her like he had been given an electric shock. Unfortunately, due to their awkward positioning on the couch, both of his legs had fallen asleep, causing him to sway and stumble forward, falling ass over tea kettle onto the carpet. His forehead pinged off of the corner of the coffee table and he crumpled to the ground, clutching his injured head in his hands. “Oh _fuuuuck_!” he whined.

“ _Oh my God, Charlie!_ ” Dee shrieked, springing off the couch and rushing to his side. The blonde crouched down onto her knees, trying to investigate the gravity of the situation. “Are you okay?” she asked, unable to mask the anxiety in her voice. She was grateful that the two of them weren’t with any of the gang because their absence meant that she didn’t feel the need to disguise her concern for him as cruel amusement.

“Well, I don’t _think_ I’m dying.” Charlie reasoned, but his voice strained with pain. He pulled his hands away from his forehead and examined them, discovering that his palms were streaked with fresh blood. “Oh shit, maybe I am.”

“Oh, _fuck me_.” Dee whimpered, lifting Charlie’s chin up with her fingers and pushing his disheveled, chestnut hair back with her other hand so that she could clearly assess the situation. 

There was a large, ugly gash across his forehead that went up into his hairline. His dark brown hair was already sticky with fresh blood. She knew from personal experience – that one time she crashed her mother’s BMW into a tree when she had downed an entire bottle of vodka by herself – that head wounds tended to bleed more, but the injury looked too severe to just put a band-aid on. She gnawed on her bottom lip, chewing it anxiously. “Charlie, this looks really bad.” she told him, her voice panicky. “I think you need stitches.”

“Oh, come on.” Charlie scoffed, pushing her hands away from his face. “I’ve had way worse things happen to me. I’m fine.” he assured her, placing his palms on his knees – leaving bloody handprints in the process – and pushing himself to his feet. Dee watched with concern as the color rapidly drained from his face and he swayed drunkenly, stumbling backwards. Finally, he plopped back onto the couch roughly, letting out a harsh grunt. Charlie groaned, putting his aching head into his shaking hands. “Fuck.”

Dee hopped to her feet instantaneously and rushed towards the kitchen at top speed. She tore through the drawers, looking for something to stem the blood flow. Finally, she came across a worn-out blue dish towel adorned with yellow rubber duckies that she hoped was relatively clean. She snatched it and dashed back into the living room, praying that Charlie had not already bled all over her furniture. Charlie Kelly tended to leave evidence of himself wherever he went and Dee didn’t want it all over her couch. She thrusted the dishtowel into his grubby hands. Charlie mumbled his thanks, bunching the towel up and pressing it against his forehead. The faded blue fabric immediately began to turn red, the rubber duckies smeared with gore.

“Just give me a minute to get dressed and I’ll drive you to the hospital.” Dee said quickly. Charlie released a resigned sigh and nodded gently, trying not to jostle his head too much so that he could keep the dishtowel in place.

Dee sprinted into her bedroom and got dressed at lightning speed, snatching random pieces of clothing from around the room without paying much attention to what she was grabbing. As she shimmied a pair of skinny jeans up her narrow hips, she hoped vaguely that she didn’t look like a complete idiot. She grabbed her flaxen locks in her fist, pulling her hair into a messy ponytail at the base of her neck, ignoring her faded, day old make-up entirely.

Less than ten minutes later, the duo was in her car, headed for the nearest emergency room.

*******

The emergency waiting room at the Sayre Free Clinic was spotlessly clean and smelled strongly of disinfectant, like someone had wiped down every surface of the entire room in hand sanitizer, and some other distinct, unpleasant smell that Dee hated because she associated with hospitals and old people. A rancid cocktail of dusty, stale air and decay.

Dee clutched at her stomach, feeling a little queasy. _Why the fuck did I even come in here?_ she wondered, trying to focus on anything except the oppressive hospital smell that was currently assaulting her olfactory senses. She could have just dropped him off out front, she reasoned. Charlie was a grown man. Charlie didn’t _need_ her there, so why did she feel compelled to stay with him all the same?

The searing fluorescent lights lining the length of the ceiling made the entire room blindingly white and made Dee feel as though she was sizzling underneath a heat lamp like a lizard trapped in a terrarium. She was thankful for the second time that morning that her hangover was relatively light. Still, the pulsating pain behind her eyes was annoying and she massaged the bridge of her nose with her fingers.

The mismatched pair were seated in awkward plastic chairs the same shade of green as pond scum with stiff backs that were impossible to sit in comfortably, no matter how many times they adjusted themselves. Dee was nursing a Styrofoam cup of shitty waiting room coffee that she had added a metric fuckton of fake sugar to. Meanwhile, Charlie was busying himself studying a page of _Highlights_ magazine with the intensity of a bomb technician unarming a nuclear warhead. The blonde peeked over his shoulder to see that Charlie was searching for the hidden objects and she had to resist the urge to point out the objects that he had clearly missed.

A woman sitting behind the glass at the front desk called out Charlie’s name and he set down his magazine, pushing himself to his feet, the now entirely crimson towel still pressed firmly against his forehead. The short brunette scuttled over to the desk and the secretary gave him a strange look, but she shrugged it off immediately (she had seen weirder) and handed Charlie a pile of intake paperwork strapped to a clipboard. He scampered quickly back to their seats and stood in front of Dee expectantly, wearing a somewhat guilty expression. His cheeks were tinged pink with embarrassment. Dee exhaled a weary sigh and rolled her eyes, holding out her free hand and taking the clipboard from him. Charlie gave her a sheepish grin, plopping down in the chair next to her.

“Thanks Dee.” Charlie replied, his tone apologetic. The lanky blonde gave him a quick nod of affirmation and started studying the paperwork without a word. Charlie awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, leaving a streak of dried blood on his skin and the collar of his shirt. He was grateful that she wasn’t loudly bringing attention to his illiteracy and mocking him for it. He was positive that if he had gone with Mac, he would have made fun of him. Frank would have just told him to just use superglue on the gash and not bothered to take him to the hospital at all. He was thankful that it was Dee who was with him.

Dee spent the first few minutes in silence, filling out Charlie’s basic information with a swiftness that startled her. It surprised her how much of it she knew off of the top of her head. _Well, you’ve known him for a million years_. she thought, rationalizing her errant fantasies in the back of her brain. _It’s absolutely normal that you would know his birthday, his middle name, and his… social security number by heart._ Dee told herself, attempting to force herself to believe that it was true.

Finally, she came across a portion of the paperwork that she couldn’t answer without Charlie’s help. “Family history…” Dee read aloud, clicking and unclicking the top of the pen absentmindedly. “Charlie do you have any family members who have had an illness?” she asked, turning to face him.

Charlie hmm’d, his brows furrowing with concentration He pressed the towel harder to his forehead as if the action would somehow help him better recall his family’s medical history. Finally, he replied, “My mom had cancer.”

“No, she didn’t, Charlie.” the slender blonde reminded him. “She and Mrs. Mac made it up.”

“Oh right,” he frowned, stroking his beard with his free hand like a professor trying to remember a complicated formula. After a minute he added, “My Uncle Jack has small hands.”

Dee snorted audibly. “I don’t think that’s a medical condition.”

“Then nothing.”

They finished the rest of the intake forms quickly and without incident. Dee showed Charlie where he had to sign his name. She had to forcibly hold back giggles when he wrote out the letters C-A-T on the signature line. She had almost forgotten that Mac had been the one who taught Charlie how to sign his name when they were still kids. Dee walked the paperwork back up to the front desk herself. Even _she_ thought it was cruel to force someone with a gaping head wound to keep rushing back and forth between the secretary and the chairs.

Sometime later, a short nurse peeked out of the adjacent hallway, calling out Charlie’s name. She was a cute, round faced thing who looked young enough for Dennis to have stolen her ID to confirm that she was legal. She had her honey-colored hair done up in messy, twin buns on the top of her head, making her look like a knock off Princess Leia in pink scrubs. “Mr. Kelly?” the tiny nurse called out a second time. Her voice was high-pitched and pixielike. It reminded Dee of Alvin and the Chipmunks. Charlie turned to face the hall where she was standing. “You can come back now.” the nurse told him, beckoning him.

Charlie stood up, but instead of moving to follow the nurse, he turned towards Dee. He was chewing on his bottom lip anxiously, his sage gaze imploring. It was clear to her that he didn’t want to go alone, but he couldn’t bring himself to actually ask her to come with him. Dee exhaled a resigned sigh. _Why are men such huge babies?_ she thought, annoyed; but before she could do anything, the double-bunned nurse added, “Your wife is welcome to come with you, sir.” Dee watched with interest as Charlie’s cheeks flushed scarlet, blending into the blood smeared across his face, but he did not move to correct her. This piqued Dee’s interest. Instead, he turned to fix Dee with a penetrating stare, giving her another pleading look. The blonde raised an eyebrow inquisitively, but kept her mouth sealed shut. She would never have admitted it out loud, but she was sort of intrigued that Charlie hadn’t made a move to challenge the misconception that they were an item. She kind of wanted to see how it would play out. It wasn’t as though this was the first time they had lied about their identities. Hell, once she had even pretended to be her _brother’s_ wife, how much weirder could this be? Dee got to her feet and followed Charlie over to the nurse, who led them down the adjacent hallway to an open exam room.

The pint-sized Sailor Moon look-a-like ushered them into the room and gestured for Charlie to get up on the exam table. Dee watched with amusement as the little nurse struggled to take her friend’s vitals.

First, Charlie was reluctant to remove his jacket, rambling something about rabies or ghouls or whatever other weird shit he was always complaining about. When the nurse finally persuaded him to take the jacket off, he whined that the blood pressure cuff squeezed his arm too tightly and kept trying to claw it off while the increasingly frazzled nurse was attempting to get an accurate reading. Finally, she gave up entirely and scribbled something on his chart that Dee thought looked like _crazy_.

The petite nurse gave Charlie a large piece of gauze to replace the now ruined rubber ducky dishtowel, although the bleeding had gone from a steady torrent to a slight trickle. “Alright Mr. Kelly, the doctor will be in to see you soon.” she sighed, clearly exhausted from her bout with the gang’s Wild Card. She recovered quickly and pasted a smile back onto her face, exiting the room as quickly as she could, the door clicking shut behind her.

The two of them sat in awkward silence for a while before Dee broke the ice. “Can you believe that chick thought we were married?” she said, laughing shrilly. _You’re overcompensating_. She heard her therapist’s voice in the back of her mind, chastising her. Dee had nearly stopped seeing her after what she had come to refer to internally as “Dishgate,” but trying to find another therapist that took her crappy insurance was way more effort than she wanted to expend, so she had decided to stick with her. Somewhere along the way, she had started hearing that bitch’s annoying voice in her head like a bad self-help tape.

Charlie chuckled, “Yeah, that’s gross.” he agreed, although Dee couldn’t help but think that he did not actually sound disgusted with the concept. “Wait,” he paused, thick eyebrows scrunching with concern. Charlie looked suddenly tense. The wide-eyed worry of his expression sharply contrasted the dried blood coating half of his face, making him resemble an extra in a B-rated slasher flick. “Should I have said something?”

“N–No." Dee stuttered, feeling her cheeks begin to heat up ever-so-slightly. _Why is he looking at me like that?_ “It doesn’t matter. Nothing to stress over.” the blonde reassured him, folding her thin arms over her chest, digging her white-tipped nails into the bare skin on her arm. “It’s way more fun to play pretend, anyway.” she added, flashing him a small smile.

“Alright,” Charlie replied, returning her smile, the tension in his shoulders evaporating. He opened his mouth to say something else, but he was cut off by a soft knock on the door. The door swung open and a very tall Indian man dressed in a pristine, white lab coat and sporting a navy and gold turban, shuffled into the room. The double-bunned nurse scampered in after him, looking smaller and more mouse-like than ever, dwarfed by the doctor’s height. Dee thought he must have been at least six foot four.

“Hello, Mr. Kelly.” the doctor greeted, his tone congenial. He had a smooth Indian accent that sounded out of place in a shitty public clinic smack dab in the middle of Philadelphia. “I am Dr. Singh.” he introduced himself. He grabbed Charlie’s free hand, ignoring the blood caked on it, and shook it vigorously. The bearded doctor turned to face Dee. “And you must be Mrs. Kelly, it is a pleasure.” Dr. Singh said, the corners of his sparkling black eyes crinkling behind his tiny, circular glasses as he smiled.

“Um, yeah.” Dee replied, choosing not to shake his soiled hand. “I typically go by Dee.” the lithe blonde informed the doctor. She glanced over at Charlie, who was observing her curiously.

Dr. Singh walked over to the sink in two lengthy strides. He rapidly sanitized his hands in the sink and slipped on a pair of fresh, blue medical gloves.

The doctor returned his attention to Charlie. He gripped the much shorter man’s head tightly in his hands, examining him in the same way a vet might examine a feral cat. The messy-haired brunette tried to jerk his head away, but Dr. Singh held firm, stilling him with his powerful fingers. He pushed Charlie’s haphazard chestnut locks back, inspecting the gash. “It looks like you took quite the spill, Mr. Kelly.” he commented, releasing Charlie’s face. “We will have to give you a few stitches.” Dr. Singh informed him, turning to leave the room. “I will be back in five minutes.”

He strode out of the exam room, the curvy nurse tailing him closely.

True to his word, Dr. Singh returned exactly five minutes later, the pint-sized nurse nipping at his heels. She was carrying a tray loaded down with various implements that caused Charlie to go green around the gills the moment he set eyes on them. Dee had to bite down the laugh bubbling up inside of her. She couldn’t believe that Charlie Kelly, a man who willingly played around in a dangerous, shit filled sewer, a man who would bash in a rat’s brains without a second thought, was afraid of a minor medical procedure.

The doctor began dabbing at the gash on his forehead with cotton balls soaked in alcohol, cleaning up some of the blood and cleansing the wound. Charlie hissed through his teeth, scrunching his eyes closed. “I am sorry for the sting.” the bespectacled doctor apologized, patting Charlie’s knee reassuringly. “I need to disinfect the wound.” he explained, calmly. Dee thought that his voice was soothing, like a warm cup of tea filled with honey. He had the kind of voice that would be popular in one of those ASMR videos she always heard freaks on the internet babbling on about.

Dr. Singh handed a fistful of bloodied cotton balls to the nurse, who collected them in a pile for disposal. He turned back towards the tray and drew up a needle of what Dee assumed was some sort of anesthetic, holding up the syringe and gently tapping the side with his finger to remove any bubbles.

When Charlie fixed his gaze on the syringe, his bright green eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, the pupils blown out to twice their normal size. “Um– uh–” the brunette spluttered, starting to move his arms in the jerky, wind-milling fashion that he did whenever he got too excited or anxious. “I-is it okay if my um, wife holds my hand?” he asked, his voice wavering slightly. He turned to look at her, emerald eyes large and pleading.

Dr. Singh turned back around to face Charlie again, flashing them both another sickeningly sweet, tooth decaying smile. “Of course, Mr. Kelly. Although I assure you that this is a painless procedure.” he promised him.

Dee realized that she was blushing again. It made her stomach twist up into knots to hear herself called Charlie’s wife. How could something so incredibly stupid give her butterflies? Was she still some fifteen year old loser? She swallowed her feelings and walked over to the exam table, sliding her hand into Charlie’s (cleaner) hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze.

“Okay Mr. Kelly, I’m going to numb the area. Slight pinch.” The doctor warned, puncturing his skin with the needle and injecting the anesthetic with amazing swiftness. Charlie clutched Dee’s hand, more out of fear than pain, nearly crushing her fingers in his powerful, calloused digits. Dee swallowed the exclamation of pain that threatened to burst forward, forcing herself to allow him to squash her fingers.

When the doctor began threading the needle, Dee shut her eyes as well. She could handle watching him clean and numb the wound, but she didn’t want to look at him sewing it shut like he was mending a rip in some sort of macabre pair of pants. Dr. Singh rapidly stitched the wound closed with deft fingers. “All done!” he said, clapping his hands together.

Dee opened her eyes and glanced down at Charlie, who met her gaze, smiling weakly. When the doctor turned his back to them to dispose of the needle, Charlie gave her hand another squeeze. “Thank you.” he mouthed, dropping her hand.

She shrugged, leaning down and whispering in his ear. “Don’t read into it.”

The doctor quickly bandaged the wound and gave Charlie a prescription for medicated ointment as well as instructions detailing how to keep the wound clean. Dr. Singh told them they would need a follow-up appointment in a few weeks, but neither of them remembered to make it. They rushed out before the nurse could ask for clarification of their insurance information, which Dee had falsified.

*******

Dee dropped Charlie off in front of his building.

“Get changed out of those bloody clothes.” she instructed him as he opened the door and hopped out of her car onto the pavement. He shut the door behind him and headed for the building. Dee rolled down the window, calling after him, “And don’t forget to wash your hair!” she shouted at his back.

He looked back at her over his shoulder, smiling. “I got it, Dee!” he replied, waving a dismissive hand in her direction. “Stop badgering me!”

“Fuck you!” Dee yelled, “See you at the bar.”

He headed into the building, chuckling quietly to himself.

*******

_It was cold and dark in the basement. A sliver of white moonlight was coming through the slated windows. It cast sharp shadows around them, making the room look monstrous, large and cavernous. The small space heater was plugged into an outlet across the room, chugging along, casting a soft reddish-orange glow on the two teenagers._

_Charlie exhaled in a cloud, his breath steaming the air. His mother had not been able to afford the heating bill this month, so he and Ronnie were sitting in the basement still fully dressed in their coats and hats. Their shoulders were draped in some ratty old blankets that Charlie had scrounged up from the hoarder’s nest of trash looming around them, wrapped tightly around their bodies like cocoons made of fabric. Their laughter pealed through the frigid air. On any other night, Charlie might have worried about waking his mother, but she had nodded off hours ago with the help of a few bottles of cheap, drugstore wine and he didn’t expect that he would have any luck rousing her until sometime the next afternoon._

_He had no clue what time it was, but he could see the moon outside the tiny basement window. It was full, bright enough that he could make out most of Ronnie’s face, although it was heavily shadowed. The two of them had been exchanging a brown paper bag filled with airplane glue back and forth for the past few hours, laughing and chattering away about nothing in particular. Ronnie had just told him that he was toying with the idea of calling himself Mac now, hoping that the new nickname would catch on and people would stop comparing him to the fast food mascot that his convict father had named him after. Charlie protested the idea. He didn’t think that you could give yourself a nickname, it had to be given to you by someone else. If you could choose your own nickname, he would have called himself something better than Dirtgrub – like the Falcon._

_Ronnie turned to face Charlie in the semi-darkness. His eyes were rimmed with red, the dark pupils blown out twice their size. “Hey Charlie, did you hear me?” Ronnie asked, his voice loud in the din of the basement. He hadn’t. When he shook his head, Ronnie pouted in that fashion that made him look like an abandoned puppy caught in the rain. “I asked if we should invite Dennis over.” he said, his tone bordering on annoyance. “He gave me his number after the last time I sold him a dime bag.” Ronnie told him, cheerfully. Ronnie always sounded excited when he talked about Dennis Reynolds, it was the same kind of excitement he displayed whenever he was blathering on about martial arts or working out._

_The smaller boy frowned, crumpling the paper bag in his hand anxiously without realizing what he was doing. “You think someone that much cooler than us would come here?” Charlie asked, his brow furrowing in contemplation. He was fairly sure that Dennis Reynold considered himself to be on a much higher social tier than the likes of Dirtgrub and Ronnie the Rat and Charlie would not have faulted him for thinking that. He couldn’t fathom why a popular, pretty, rich kid would want to waste his time with a couple of white trash burnouts._

_The space surrounding Ronnie was beginning to look blurred around the edges, as if Charlie were looking at him through a dense fog, yet his features were sharp enough that Charlie could make out his pores. He scrubbed his eyes. Glue highs always fucked with his vision._

_Ronnie looked offended. “What are you even talking about, dude?” he scoffed, “I don’t know about you, but I’m totally cool.” he insisted. Ronnie was practically shouting now, gesticulating wildly, nearly smacking Charlie in the face._

_Charlie rolled his eyes. Ronnie had always been delusional about what a popular badass he was and nobody could disrupt his perfect fiction. Charlie had never bothered to push it. Ronnie’s extreme self-confidence and stubborn overestimation of his own abilities was his armor and truthfully, Charlie was loath to burst his bubble._

_“Sure, dude.” Charlie replied, dismissively, uncrumpling the brown paper bag clenched in his fist and taking another deep hit. He wondered idly if his mother had left anything in the liquor stash that she had squirreled away in the back of the laundry closet. She had emptied out several bottles of laundry detergent and replaced the contents with gin, a fact that he had discovered by accident when he made an attempt to wash his own laundry to rid it of the reek of pot and made all of his clothes ended up smelling like he had bathed in alcohol. “Do you think Dennis will bring his sister?” Charlie heard the question as it was coming out of his mouth, he hadn’t even realized that he had been thinking about her._

_Ronnie made a face like he was sucking on a lemon. “God, I hope not.” he said, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of the breast pocket of his thick hunting coat and tugging one out with his teeth. He held the pack out to Charlie, who took one and Ronnie flipped it closed with a flick of his wrist, tucking it safely back into his pocket. “That girl is one ugly bitch.” he commented, scrounging around in the many pockets of his cargo jacket until he found his lighter. He cupped his hand around the tip of his cigarette and lit it. He held the lighter out to Charlie, who accepted it and quickly lit his own cigarette. Charlie chucked the lighter back at Ronnie, who made a weak attempt to catch it, swiping his hand uselessly through the air, only to have it smack him in the face._

_Charlie didn’t say anything for a while, taking a long drag and expelling a thin stream of smoke into the dark of the basement. He had hung out with Dee Reynolds a few more times by the dumpster when she accompanied her brother to buy weed. Charlie thought that either Dennis was much more of a stoner than he seemed, or he was making excuses to come and see the dealer._

_When Dennis and Ronnie ignored them, too wrapped up in themselves to pay attention to their surroundings, Dee would join Charlie on the concrete. Sometimes she would bring him cigarettes. She had been trying to teach him how to make smoke rings, but he couldn’t quite seem to master the technique. Other times, he would fill his thermos with whatever alcohol he managed to secretly swipe from his mother and they would trade sips in between drunken giggles._

_Charlie liked Dee. She was dorky and a little full of herself, but she was fun to talk to and she didn’t seem to find the act of merely conversing with him disgusting the way other girls in school seemed to._

_“–so I feel like if I put it like that, Dennis will definitely come. Should I call him?”_

_Charlie was snapped out of his reverie with a sudden jolt. Had Ronnie been talking this entire time? Shit, he hadn’t heard a goddamned word he had said. How long had he been spaced out? A small wink of pain alerted him to the fact that the cigarette propped in his fingers was nearly ash, burning the pads of his fingers. He flicked the stub into the dark of the basement. “Uh, s–sure bro. Go for it.” he managed, somehow fearful that Ronnie could read his mind and knew that he had been thinking about Dee._

_Ronnie didn’t need to be told twice. He leapt to his feet and tore up the basement stairs with amazing speed for someone as intoxicated as he was. Charlie sat alone in the darkness for a while, trying to gather the random string of stoned thoughts drifting through his brain together before standing up. He absolutely needed to find some booze if more people were coming over because he definitely didn’t have enough glue to split between four people. He hoped that his mom had whiskey. It was Dee’s favorite._

_A little while later, Ronnie and Charlie were standing at the end of his street in the bitter cold, waiting for the twins._

_They had advised Dennis to park up the street so that it would be easier to smuggle them into the basement without Mrs. Kelly realizing that anyone else had come over. Charlie’s mom was already paranoid that someone was going to break into her house in the middle of the night to slit her throat and the last thing they needed to do was trigger one of her epic freak outs._

_They heard the Reynolds twins before they saw them._

_“Hurry up, Dee! This is why I didn’t want you to come! You sound like someone banging pots and pans together whenever you walk!”_

_“Oh my God, shut the fuck up, Dennis! Are you worried I’m going to embarrass you in front of your boyfriend?”_

_“ShutupShutupShutupShutup”_

_Dennis and Dee rounded the corner, snapping at each other like feral racoons fighting over the ownership of a dumpster. Abruptly, Ronnie took off running in the direction of the bickering pair. Panicking, unsure of what to do, Charlie sprinted after him. The two of them skidded to a stop in front of the ornery twins._

_“Hey, Charlie. Hey, Mac.” Dennis greeted them casually, flashing them an easy smile as if they had not just witnessed him arguing with his sister like he was a second away from clawing her eyes out of her skull. Ronnie– Mac's– face lit up._

_“Dennis!” Mac practically squealed and Charlie was embarrassed for him. His childhood friend was nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet with barely suppressed excitement. “Come on.” he said, grabbing the curly-haired boy’s arm and dragging him along the sidewalk towards the Kelly house. “We got some of Charlie’s mom’s booze and I have this strain that I think you’re really gonna like.” Mac explained eagerly._

_Dennis allowed himself to be led along by the other boy, seemingly both annoyed and bemused by his overt enthusiasm._

_Charlie turned to face Dee and she smiled at him. Charlie’s stomach squirmed awkwardly and he wondered if he had snorted too much glue._

_“Well, what are we waiting for?” she asked, the corners of her pretty mouth upturning in a conspiratorial smirk. “We don’t wanna let those boners drink all the booze before we get any.” the blonde said, laughing. Dee held out her hand to him and Charlie stared at it like it might bite him. He waited a beat too long and she started to turn pink, clearly embarrassed, and moved to withdraw her hand when he reached out and grasped it. Dee blushed harder, but didn’t pull away._

_“Yeah, let’s go.” Charlie agreed, giving her a small, shy smile. He guided her up the street towards his house. Dee made no comment, smiling to herself. There was an icy chill in the autumn air, but Dee’s hand felt so warm and soft in his own and Charlie forgot about the cold._

_She didn’t let go of his hand until they got to his house._

*******

“Where the hell have you been!?”

Mac’s angry voice assaulted her ears the instant her high-heeled boot stepped over the threshold into Paddy’s. Dee grimaced. She should have known that it wouldn’t be so easy to explain away why both she _and_ Charlie were late to work without sending their buff cohort so much as text. She steeled herself and fixed her co-worker with a flinty glare, bright blue eyes flashing dangerously.

“I had shit to do.” she snapped, viciously. “What do you even care, anyway? No one’s even here.” Dee sniped, gesturing around the vacant bar for emphasis. There were a few regulars milling around, but they might as well have been plants for all the attention that Dee paid them, they were there so often that she considered them part of the décor.

She had gone home to take a quick shower and re-do her make-up. She hoped that there was no trace of her hectic morning in her appearance.

Mac crossed his thick arms over his newly muscular chest, fixing her with a glare, his dark brows creasing in irritation. “Well Charlie’s not answering his phone. So, it’s just been me and Frank and Frank flushed his pants down the toilet. I need back up, okay?” Mac explicated, clearly exasperated. 

“Guilty.” Frank acknowledged, toasting the nearly empty bar with his beer. It was in that moment that Dee realized that her fake father was sitting on the stool in his tighty-whities. Dee scrunched her nose in revulsion.

“ _Jesus Christ_ , Frank.” the slender blonde admonished, shaking her head in disgust.

“Don’t be a prude, Deandra.” he chastised her. Dee rolled her eyes, but kept her mouth shut, knowing that anything else she said would just get twisted around and turned back on her by the two men.

Dee had just started getting set up behind the bar when Charlie waltzed through the front door.

He had changed into his standard uniform of a ratty old tee shirt and worn jeans. Dirty, but mercifully blood free. Thankfully, he had remembered to wash the blood out of his hair and it was wet and tousled in that perfectly messy bedhead, still dotted with moisture.

“And where were you?” Mac snapped, turning on him like an angry jackal who had sniffed out new prey. “Why didn’t you answer your phone? I swear to God dude, if you were skipping work to hunt ghouls again, I will kill you, man. I–”

“No, no, no, no, no.” Frank interjected, waving a dismissive hand in Mac’s direction. “He was busy banging that Waitress broad.” Frank explained, turning to Charlie with a devilish grin on his face. “I saw the charge for the honeymoon suite on my card.” the older man laughed, taking a swig of his beer. “Is she the one who did that to you?” he asked, indicating to the bandage on Charlie’s forehead and wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. “Kinky.”

“Ew, Charlie.” Mac wrinkled his nose like he had just taken a giant whiff of a pile of garbage. “Can’t you bang gross chicks on your own time?”

Charlie was starting to get visibly flustered, spluttering and agitatedly running his fingers through his still damp hair. “ _Oh my God, shut up!_ ” he screamed suddenly, and Mac and Frank stopped talking over one another to look at him with mild interest. “I actually dumped the Waitress.” he told them quietly, studying his sneakers carefully, avoiding eye contact. The other two gaped at him. Dee tried her best to look sufficiently surprised by the news, but she doubted that anyone was paying any attention to her reaction in the first place.

“You serious, Charlie?” Frank asked, swiveling on the stool and giving the rest of the gang a perfect view of his underwear clad crotch. Mac and Dee grimaced in unison. “We have our apartment back?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Charlie said, shrugging. “It had to happen.” he stated, his tone uncharacteristically serious. He peered up at them.

“Wow dude,” Mac said, his surprise clearly evident in his voice. “I never thought you would come to your senses about her.” he admitted, “She’s a real bitch. So, did she hit you with a bottle or something?” he questioned, pointing to his own forehead.

“Uh–” Charlie stuttered, his gaze skittering around the bar. He locked eyes with Dee for an instant before returning his green-eyed gaze to Mac. “Y–Yeah.” he agreed, “She went fucking crazy!” he lied, his voice suddenly enthusiastic. Well, it wasn’t a _total_ lie. It was true that the Waitress had been incensed, but it was better to let Mac and Frank think that she had cracked a bottle over his head than admit that he had spent the night _on top_ of Dee. Especially when the whole thing was just another drunken mistake that meant nothing. He should just move past it.

Mac snorted. “What a crazy drunk slut.” the taller man chuckled to himself. “Look, I’m glad you and the bird are finally here because I need you to watch the bar while I go out to try and scout some possible new recruits.” he explained, flashing the three of them the double guns. Charlie and Dee locked gazes again and rolled their eyes in tandem, a practiced maneuver that was second nature to them in spite of any other awkwardness in their relationship.

“Again?” Charlie asked.

Dee frowned. “Wait, let me get this straight. Did you just want us to come in so you could go to Rainbow and ogle dudes?” she sniped. Mac closed his eyes, pressing his palms together as though he was praying and bringing his clasped hands up to his face. He exhaled slowly before opening his eyes and turning to glare at the blonde directly.

“No, Dee.” he said slowly and deliberately, as if he was speaking with a small child. “I am going to the _gym_ again so that I can ocularly assess possible new bodyguards to assist me in protecting this bar.” the brunette explicated, talking down to her as though she was the stupidest person alive for failing to understand the mental gymnastics he had constructed in order to go scope out men during work hours.

Dee’s thin eyebrows flew towards her hairline, but Mac stubbornly kept her gaze. She shook her head in disbelief and returned to setting up behind the bar, ignoring his sharp glare. “I look forward to seeing the specimen you manage to attract.” she teased, “Since you fancy yourself a top, I’m sure it will be the beefiest of bottoms.” Dee snorted at her own joke.

Mac squawked at her like an angry seagull. He walked backwards out of the door, flashing her both of his middle fingers as he exited.

Dee let out an exasperated sigh, running her fingers through her long, flaxen tresses. She needed a fucking drink.

“Frank,” Charlie said suddenly, “why the fuck can I see your penis?”

*******

When Mac shuffled Rex into the bar a few days later, Dee nearly pissed herself laughing. Leave it to Mac to manage to sniff out a man who she knew from personal experience was in fact, a brawny bottom.

“So, everyone remembers Rex, right?” Mac questioned, indicating the overly muscled man to his right as if they had not encountered him during multiple events, including an impromptu party to root out whether or not he was the father of Dee’s baby.

“You’re the guy I made eat cockroaches, right?” Frank asked him.

“Yes, sir.” Rex nodded, without any hint of shame.

“Good man. I like him.”

“So, he’s going to be checking ID’s?” Charlie inquired, looking Rex up and down. He was sitting on one of the stools at the bar, already three beers in despite the fact that it was barely two in the afternoon.

“Yeah, the same thing I used to do.” Mac told him. Charlie snorted audibly, beer fizz coming out of his nose, and his childhood friend glowered at him.

“You’ve never checked an ID in your life, Mac.” Charlie snickered, wiping the foam from underneath his nose with the sleeve of his black track jacket. It wasn’t a lie. Dee was pretty sure that she had never once seen Mac card anyone in all the years they had worked together. She suspected it was because he lacked the ability to do basic math in his head.

“It was really great of Mac to offer me a job.” Rex gushed, gazing at Mac with stars in his eyes. “He’s a lifesaver.” _Wow_. Dee thought, bitterly. _He never looked at me like that._ In truth, she was less jealous than she was intrigued by this work-out turkey’s obvious infatuation with _Mac_ of all people.

While Rex was busy singing Mac’s praises, Dee found her gaze drawn to Charlie, who was observing the conversation between the other three men with mild interest.

It had been a little over a week since his spill in her apartment and he had removed the gauze, leaving his stitches on display. She wondered idly if the gash would leave an obvious scar. Suddenly, Dee had the distinct urge to reach her hand out across the counter of the bar and run the pad of her thumb across the ridges of the stitches and up into his deceptively soft, tangled chestnut hair.

Charlie turned away from the conversation to find Dee staring at him. She flushed, her delicate cheeks dotted with a light pink. He gave her a lopsided smile and she did her best to return it, hoping that her thoughts weren’t written all over her face. She ducked below the bar, trying to hide her blush and grabbed a beer, uncapping it with a quick flick of the bottle opener.

Dee stood back up to find Charlie still staring fixedly at her. “How’s your head?” the blonde asked him, trying to ignore his penetrating emerald gaze. She took a long pull of her beer to soothe her nerves. _Get ahold of yourself, Deandra_. she scolded herself, internally.

“S’fine.” he informed her, running his fingers through his hair and flashing her another dopey smile. How had she never noticed what a nice smile he had? “I don’t know if I said it already, but thanks for helping me out the other day. And thanks for not telling Mac and Frank what happened.”

Dee blinked, slightly taken aback. She was definitely not used to people thanking her, or being very nice to her at all, if she was being totally honest. She still didn’t have any idea how to react to it. She glanced around to see if the others were listening, but they were far too absorbed in their own discussion to pay her and Charlie much attention at all. Currently, Mac was having Rex flex in a series of poses, pointing to each of his muscles in turn and explaining to Frank how they would help him as a bouncer.

“No problem.” Dee replied, “Anytime.”

They smiled at each other across the bar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was entirely me being a self-indulgent nerd who loves characters reluctantly taking care of one another. I couldn't remember if Dee actually had a coffee table or not, but too bad, she does now. In case you were wondering (which I am sure that you were not) Sayre Free Clinic is an actual hospital. I am not sure if there is a Dr. Singh on staff. 
> 
> I really like the idea of Charlie getting the idea of hiding booze in cleaning products from his mother. I also imagine that her basement became her hoarder's nest because her OCD forced her to keep the rest of the house clean.
> 
> Also, Rex gets pegged. I refuse to believe otherwise.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dennis returns from North Dakota.

_5:45 PM_

_On a Wednesday_

_Bismarck, ND_

Dennis Reynolds hated North Dakota.

He hated it more than he hated the suburbs, more than he hated it when his foundation wasn’t perfectly blended, more than he hated prudes and consent laws, more than he hated the way that Mac would look at him with his big, brown puppy-dog eyes, huge and imploring, like he was a specimen of perfection, because it always reminded him that no matter what he might tell himself, he was – for lack of a better term – a bastard man.

He hated North Dakota, but Dennis had not been able to find an opening for him to go back to Philly. At least not one that he would not feel embarrassed about and if he still had anything, it was his pride, and he wouldn’t compromise that – not this time, at least.

In truth, he was doing alright for himself. He was living alone in a two-bedroom apartment in Bismarck, where the rent was less than half of what he and Mac had been paying back in Pennsylvania. He had even converted the spare bedroom into a sound-proof, high class sex dungeon that would make Christian Grey jealous. In the time he had been there, he had already indulged in more than his share of nighttime trysts with a bevy of women. The women in North Dakota were even more prone to falling for his “charms” than the ones back home. Especially now that he had Brian Junior – Brian – to use as bait for the MILF types that frequented the local hot spots.

To his credit, Dennis thought he was doing pretty well with the whole father thing, better than he thought he would be at least. Sure, he loathed the annoying baby shit like diaper changes and late-night feedings, but he was still able to muscle through them when he put the effort in. He even kind of _liked_ the kid. Brian was a pretty cute baby, with curly blonde hair and bright blue eyes. He looked much like Dennis himself had looked as a little kid. And of course, Dennis thought he had been ridiculously good-looking since birth, so it only stood to reason that his progeny would be Gerber Baby handsome.

He had found a job at a Best Buy peddling smartphones and tablets. His natural charm and candor made him a great salesman, and if he happened to put a mirroring application on the electronics of a few of the more _attractive_ customers, who really needed to know?

Dennis had even started seeing a therapist and was taking his medication everyday as directed, something he would have never managed to do back home.

He didn’t miss Philly at all.

_Aw, fuck._

*******

One particularly bland and dreary Monday, Dennis was heading home from work in his new Dodge SUV. He despised the car. It was bulky and ugly and the same shade of beige as raw oatmeal. The salesman had made it sound like a great deal, since it included an onboard GPS and Bluetooth access. But Dennis longed for the sense of power and serenity that his classic Range Rover had instilled in him.

He decided spontaneously that he would call his sister. It was only a one hour time difference between Bismarck and Philadelphia, so he knew that she was awake and likely fucking around in the bar. He wasn’t sure what possessed him, since he rarely bothered with calling anyone, particularly his bitchy sibling. Especially not when he was dead sober.

“Call Bird.” Dennis instructed the car.

Dee answered the phone after a few rings. “Sup, boner?” she greeted him casually and Dennis could hear the clattering sounds of the bar in the background. He had been gone for almost a year and she was still shit at her job.

“Wonderful per usual.” he told her, trying his best to sound smug. “How is everything out East?” he questioned. His conversation was rehearsed – perfunctory – Dee knew what he really wanted to know.

“Fine.” she replied, noncommittally. “I started a new class on stage fighting down at the community college.” his twin informed him, and he hummed in response, not really caring.

“How are Frank and Charlie?” Dennis didn’t want to sound too eager to talk about his former roommate, although the truth was that he was anxious to move past this part of the conversation.

“Um, fine.” Dee replied, stumbling a little over her words and he could sense from the tone of her voice that she was on guard, willing him not to dwell on the subject. Any other time, he might have taken pleasure in needling her. In relentlessly pushing her buttons until she snapped at him like a ravenous junkyard dog, but luckily for his feminine counterpart, Dennis did not actually give a single solitary fuck what stupid shit Frank and Charlie might have been caught up in.

“And Mac?” Dennis asked carefully, willing himself to sound casual.

“Haven’t seen much of him. He’s been spending a lot of time with Rex.”

“ _What?_ ” he shouted, and he could hear the shrillness in his voice, but he was unable to control it. “Who the fuck is Rex?”

“You remember Rex.” Dee responded, impatiently. “He auditioned for that billboard Frank bought a few years back. Built like a brick shithouse.”

 _Now_ Dennis remembered Rex. An annoying little gym rat with more muscles than brains. His lascivious – and clearly non-discriminating – twin had beleaguered him into sleeping with her skinny ass several times. He was starting to get flustered and he could feel himself getting hot under the collar. Even fifteen hundred miles away, Mac still had a way of burrowing under his skin.

“Why would Mac be hanging out with that asshole?” he snapped. There was a short pause and then his twin sister burst into peals of shrill laughter. He glared darkly at the speaker, as though his disgruntled gaze could somehow penetrate the airwaves and set her on fire.

“Why?” she questioned, “Are you jealous?” she teased, and Dennis could picture that smug little smirk on her ugly bird face. He gripped the steering wheel tighter, flexing his fingers in agitation.

“You know I’m not.” Dennis growled. “Stop being such a fucking cunt, Dee.” he hissed through clenched teeth.

“He hired Rex as some extra help.” Dee explained, her giggles finally starting to die down. “I’m pretty sure they’re banging.” she added, conspiratorially.

Dennis saw red. A familiar wave of anger bubbled up from deep inside of him, boiling like lava, rushing towards the surface, ready to explode. “That fucking asshole.” he heard himself snarl.

“Oh my God!” Dee squealed. “You _are_ jealous. Oh my God, Dennis.” she started to snicker again before breaking into another fit of bellowing laughter that pierced his ears like knives to his eardrums. Dennis could feel his cheeks start to color. He ground his teeth together in frustration.

Suddenly, he exploded, “Stop laughing, you dumb bitch!” he ordered, screaming into the receiver at top volume as he came to a screeching halt at the light. “Goddammit, stop laughing, you piece of shit!”

A young mother pushing a stroller down the sidewalk glanced in his direction, shaking her head sadly, and Dennis felt something inside of him snap like an autumn twig beneath the sole of a boot. He let go of the wheel and proceeded to stick his entire upper body out of the window, shaking his fist at her. “What the fuck are you looking at, you ugly bitch?” he snarled, “I will strangle you with my bare hands!” he screamed. The woman’s eyes widened to the size of saucers and she quickened her pace as she desperately tried to get away from the dark-haired psychopath that was currently shrieking at her from his car window. “Yeah, you better run! I’ll eat your fucking baby, you stupid slut!”

He slid back into the driver’s seat, panting and sweating like he had just run a mile, his face an ugly shade of plum. Dee was still chortling.

“Thanks, Den.” she managed in between giggles. “I needed a good laugh after this wet, sticky diarrhea of a week.”

“Fuck you.” he muttered.

“Look,” Dee interjected, her voice suddenly serious. “If you’re pissed that Mac is drooling all over Rex, then you should come home and do something about it, jackass.”

“I don’t care what Mac’s doing.” he replied, quietly.

“ _Mm-hmm._ ”

He caught a flight to Pennsylvania the next day.

*******

_When Dee got home from school she bolted out of the car before it made a complete stop and darted through the door at top speed, tearing up the stairs and into the solace of her bedroom, slamming the door shut behind her for good measure. She flung herself into the sea of pillows on her bed and it was only once she was fully ensconced in the sanctity of her pillow kingdom that she finally allowed herself to cry._

_It was uncomfortable lying face down in her brace, which kept her back stock-stiff, but Dee ignored her physical pain in favor of her emotional pain. Sobs wracked through her body, shaking her to her core. Why the fuck did her mother have to be such a goddamned rancid bitch? Wasn’t it bad enough that she had to spend all day at school being mocked mercilessly by her peers? Why did she have to deal with this bullshit at home too? Her tears burned like sand in her eyes and she realized that she was probably destroying her make-up, something else that her mother would relentlessly needle._

_There was a quiet knock on her door._

_“Go away!” Dee groaned, willing whoever it was to just leave her the fuck alone. Her door creaked open and she moaned piteously, mentally kicking herself for forgetting to lock it._

_“Hey.” Her twin greeted her; his uncharacteristically gentle tone startling her out of her sobs. She withdrew her head out of her mound of pillows to glance up at him and his features pinched in disgust. “Jesus, Dee. You look awful.” he told her, and Dee immediately raised her hackles, preparing for yet another emotional onslaught on her self-esteem._

_“What do you want, dickweed?” she snarled, glaring at him darkly, her bright blue eyes flashing angrily. She had already had more than enough of her family’s fuckery today and she would not hesitate to chuck the lamp on her bedside table directly into her brother’s smug, pretty face._

_“Hey, hey. I come in peace.” Dennis appeased her, holding up his hand in mock surrender. Dee rolled her eyes, finding that difficult to believe. “I thought that you might want to take the edge off.” her brother added, smiling deviously as he revealed the bottle he had hidden behind his back and Dee immediately recognized the label on their mother’s expensive vodka. Her eyebrows sailed toward her hairline with interest._

_Dee bit her lip. A significant part of her really wanted to kick his ass out of her room, but the desire to drown her sorrows in alcohol was much stronger. The lanky blonde released a lengthy sigh, pulling herself into a sitting position. Resigning herself to the inevitable, she beckoned Dennis to the bed._

_He flashed her another devilish grin and shuffled into the room, shutting and locking the door behind him. Dennis plopped down next to her on the bed, unscrewing the cap on the vodka and taking a generous swig. He squinted his eyes shut and shook his head roughly, exhaling sharply through his teeth and handing the bottle off to her._

_Dee took a slug. The vodka burnt her esophagus as it slid down her throat, making her eyes water. She swiped at the corners of her eyes with her thumbs, further smearing black eyeliner down her cheeks. “She’s such a fucking bitch.” Dee whined, taking another generous gulp of liquor before passing the bottle back to her twin._

_“You kind of brought it on yourself.” Dennis chided, accepting the bottle from her. Dee made an unpleasant noise in the base of her throat that could have only been described as a squawk. She opened her mouth, ready to verbally flay him, but her twin held up a hand to silence her. Dee glowered at him, slapping at his hand in annoyance. “What I mean is, you know her, Deandra. Mom is not exactly the consoling type.” he said and she snapped her mouth shut with a click of her teeth._

_She had to admit that he had a point. Their mother was not exactly known for her compassionate demeanor. What had she really expected when she confessed to her mother that Adriano Calvanese had laughed in her face when she chanced asking him to the Sadie Hawkins Dance? Sympathy? Dee snatched the vodka back from Dennis and tipped her head back, chugging a fourth of the bottle in one go._

_Dee smacked her lips dramatically. “Why do you care anyway, asshole?” she snapped, “Mom’s obsessed with you. She’d probably frame one of your shits if she could.” the lanky blonde added bitterly. Usually, she could hide her resentment towards their mother’s favoritism, especially in front of her brother, who would revel in the opportunity to poke at her insecurities, but the alcohol always made her stupid – talkative. Sometimes, she wondered if she drank too much, but she usually discarded the notion as quickly as it occurred._

_Dee waited for the inevitable stream of insults. She nearly jumped out of her skin when Dennis placed a soothing hand on her shoulder. Dee turned to face her twin to find that she couldn’t see him through a curtain of tears. When had she started crying again?_

_Dennis didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have to. Despite their intense rivalry, they were still siblings. Although neither of them excelled at communication, not even with each other, they were still twins, and thus, shared an unspoken connection with one another. Dee expelled an exasperated sigh and placed her hand on top of his, patting it lightly._

_They didn’t talk about family anymore._

_They drank in silence for a while, passing the bottle back and forth between them, getting progressively more soused. After a while, an easy conversation bloomed between the duo. They bickered about celebrities and movies for a while. Dennis could never grasp Dee’s superior cinematic sense. She wondered if she should be an actress._

_Dee had managed to wiggle out of her brace, sliding down onto the carpet, leaning her back against the bed._

_Out of the blue Dennis asked, “Hey Dee, what do you think of Ronnie?” He was starting to slur, each word bleeding into the next._

_Dee frowned, her thin eyebrows knitting together. She tried to blink away the blurriness clouding her vision. “Ronnie the Rat?” she inquired and Dennis nodded. “He’s a fucking dork.” she told him plainly, “He’s always talking shit about how he knows karate or what the fuck ever, but I saw him try to roundhouse the dumpster and fall on his ass.”_

_Dennis burst out laughing, but it wasn’t his usual mocking laughter, she thought it seemed almost affectionate. For Dennis, at least. “Yeah, he’s a tool.” he agreed, “But I don’t think he’s that bad.”_

_“Why do you care what I think?” she inquired. The room was starting to spin. She flopped on her side, reaching out and snatching one of her plushies, dragging it across the floor and pulling it underneath her head, using it as a makeshift pillow._

_Dennis shrugged. “I don’t.” he admitted, taking another drink. “Well, I don’t usually. I just think it’s good to get on your dealer’s good side.” he told her. Dennis was pretty wasted and Dee could sense that he was losing his handle on his carefully constructed façade of omniscient control. He stumbled over his words when he talked about Ronnie, a flustered reaction that she rarely saw him display. He got that same weird twinkle in his eye that he got when he talked about people like Maureen Ponderosa. (Not that she could blame him, the Ponderosas were hot.) His cheeks were flushed a rosy pink and she couldn’t discern if it was embarrassment or intoxication. In truth, Dee was lucky that she was even conscious, and she didn’t really have the energy to parse through her brother’s expressions._

_“That’s probably true.” Dee acquiesced, reaching out her long, slender arm and waving it at her brother, who passed the vodka back to her. She upturned the bottle, splashing some onto her face and Dennis snorted into his hand. “Maybe you could get us a discount.” the blonde added after she had finally managed to find her mouth._

_“What about that little friend of his? Dirtgrub?” Dennis questioned. His demeanor reminded Dee of every rich white antagonist in an eighties ski movie. “He’s disgusting.” her twin complained. “And so fucking_ short _. How can he be sixteen and barely five foot three?” he asked, laughing._

_Dee thought about Dirtgrub. Charlie Kelly. They had hung out a few times since they met, usually at school, but they had met up with Ronnie and Charlie at least once on a weekend. Dee and Charlie would often entertain one another when Dennis and Ronnie were too engrossed in each other to pay much attention to the two of them. Charlie wasn’t exactly a genius, but he was passionate and enthusiastic when he spoke in a way that Dee found endearing. He would talk to her at length about the most ridiculous subjects, from his thoughts and feelings on various types of lizards to the ghoul hunting trip that he had forced Ronnie to go on that resulted in them getting picked up by the cops for trespassing._

_Dee thought about how his emerald eyes lit up when he talked, like he had stars trapped in his irises. The way he never stopped moving when he spoke, gesturing with his entire body. His surprisingly charming smile and hoarse, cracking laugh, still fresh out of puberty. Dee enjoyed poking fun at him, in a playful way, and he returned the favor._

_She could feel her cheeks heating up. Jesus Christ, she must be way drunker than she thought. Nobody in their right mind would be thinking about how cute Charlie “Dirtgrub” Kelly’s smile was. Dennis was looking at her strangely and Dee realized that she had been silent for way too long._

_“Y-Yeah.” Dee managed, “He’s a freak, but he’s um– he’s pretty funny when he’s wasted.” she laughed awkwardly, running anxious fingers through her flaxen tresses._

_He studied her for a moment, crystalline blue eyes probing her face before his features melted into a laugh. “That’s true.” Dennis snickered, downing the last of the vodka in one exaggerated gulp. “Maybe we should hang out with them sometime… or something.” he commented._

_Dee blinked, taken aback. Typically, her more conceited half did not like to mingle with those that he deemed below his class and therefore unworthy of his time. She thought that Ronnie must have some amazing weed._

_“Sure,” Dee agreed, pushing herself up into a seated position. The world quaked violently underneath her and she gripped her head until the room came back into focus. She turned to look up at her brother. “Want to listen to Biz Markie?”_

_“Fuck yeah!”_

_They sang along (off-key) with her CD player until they passed out on her bedroom floor._

*******

Dennis returned with little fanfare.

It wasn’t that he expected them to roll out the red carpet for him – okay, he had definitely thought about it – but somehow, he had not predicted that the entire event to be so fucking irritating. Maybe he had been away too long. To anticipate anything less than a total dumpster fire was negligent of him.

He had not bothered to inform anyone except Dee when he landed in Philly. He had sold his SUV, rather than drive it across the country back to Pennsylvania or pay for it to get flown out, and he didn’t want to spring for a ride-share, so he had phoned his irritated sister at around two in the morning, demanding that she pick him up from the airport. She eventually agreed, but only after at least fifteen minutes of loud, furious arguing that had drawn him suspicious stares in the airport.

Of course, Dennis would not have cared about disturbing Mac under any other circumstance, but the addition of Rex had thrown a wrench in his plans. Dennis couldn’t very well risk his perfect return by chancing interrupting Mac and his beefcake mid-coitus.

He baulked at the thought of Mac and that brainless muscle-head locked in a steamy embrace on _his_ couch, in _his_ apartment. The idea of that simpleton putting his meaty hands all over Mac filled him with a white-hot rage that he had little to no desire to acknowledge or analyze.

Dennis had reasoned with himself that it wasn’t that he was upset that Mac was dating, it was _who_ he was dating. In Dennis’ mind, Rex was an obsequious moron who just happened to look like a Greek God in a Speedo. He could hear Dee’s squawking laughter in the back of his brain, mocking him for displaying such ridiculous, possessive behavior in relation to Mac of all people. _Shut up, bird._ He groused internally.

Dennis strolled into Paddy’s Pub around noon the next day. He discovered that it was exactly the same as it had been when he had left. From the peeling paint on the walls to the ever-present smell of mildew and rotting wood. A few grizzled regulars were scattered throughout the bar, barely moving.

Dee and Frank were at the counter, chatting about nothing in particular, totally oblivious to his entry. Dennis felt his left eye twitch with barely suppressed irritation.

“Yo,” he greeted them, attempting to sound casual.

The two of them turned to look at Dennis, but neither one seemed particularly excited or surprised by his spontaneous return.

“Well, well.” his twin flashed him a knowing smile. The dark-haired man shot her a sharp glare, his gaze warning her against saying another word. But Dee blatantly ignored him, turning back to their former father and telling him, “Dennis came all the way back from North Dakota to fuck up Mac’s relationship.” the blonde explicated, and Frank snorted into the mug that he was drinking from.

“You gay now, Dennis?” Frank questioned and Dennis’s face started to turn red and blotchy as a familiar anger began to hum through his veins like poison.

“There’s such a thing as bisexual, Frank.” Dee reminded him.

“What’s that one again? When someone is dating two people? ‘Cause Artie and me–”

“No, no, no.” Dee interjected, “That’s polyamorous. Bisexual is when you don’t have a gender preference for who you’re dating.” she explained to a clearly fascinated Frank.

“So, do bisexuals have the same roles as gay men? Tops and bears or whatever?” he inquired.

“Yes, they do.” his daughter intoned, “A bisexual man can adapt to any role in the homosexual courtship ritual.” she continued and Dennis clenched his hands into fists, his perfectly manicured fingernails digging sharply into his palms, drawing blood. “Now clearly, Dennis would be considered a twink and a power buh–”

“ _SHUT THE FUCK UP!_ ” Dennis exploded and his father and sister turned to stare at him, wearing matching looks of boredom. Their expressions clearly conveyed that even with his absence, the two of them were more than used to his characteristic outbursts of anger and no longer fazed by them. He clenched his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose in between his fingers. He breathed in and out slowly, counting backward from ten in his head, the way his therapist in North Dakota had advised him to do whenever he was stressed. “First of all, if anything, I’m a twunk.” Dennis argued, and the other two Reynoldses snorted derisively. He ignored them and pressed on, “And I’m back because North Dakota is the most boring place on the fucking planet. Second, I didn’t want you assholes to run _my_ bar into the ground while I wasn’t here.” he finished, folding his toothpick arms across his flimsy chest.

“ _My_ bar.” Frank corrected.

A loud, unearthly screech drew their gazes to the entrance of the basement.

Dennis barely had time to register what was happening before a blur was barreling towards him at full steam, colliding into him with the impact of a freight train, knocking the wind from his lungs and sending him crashing to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

“Jesus Christ, Charlie.” Dennis said, hoarsely, trying to catch his breath. He shoved the smaller man off of him and climbed to his feet. He reached down, grabbing Charlie’s arm and yanking him up.

“Dennis!” Charlie exclaimed, wrapping Dennis into another intense bear hug. “I thought you were dead!” he cried, squeezing his slender frame so tightly that Dennis feared his ribs might snap.

“Why the fuck would you think I was dead?” Dennis spluttered, wriggling, trying to extricate himself from the janitor’s iron grasp. “You were there! You literally played the gunshot sound!” he cried, exasperated. He had been in the bar less than fifteen minutes and already he was falling back into the exact same routine. He was shouting, his forehead wrinkled in frustration, whirling his arms around like a pissed off windmill.

“But you disappeared right after and I thought like maybe, the bullets were the real deal.”

“Charlie, that is the _stupidest_ thing that I have ever heard!”

“No way, dude. A bullet can like, live inside your body and the gunpowder can travel to your heart and _BAM_! Dead!”

Even after ten long months away from Philadelphia, it was so fucking easy to immediately fall back into his old routine without missing a beat. The bickering, the sniping, the one upping each other. There was only one thing missing and that was –

“What’s up, bitches?”

Dennis spun around on his heel just in time to watch Mac waltz through the door with his arm wrapped around Rex’s waist.

When their eyes locked Mac’s voice died in his throat. The color abruptly drained from his face and his complexion turned the same color as curdled milk. _Good_. Dennis thought, ruefully. This was the kind of shocked expression that he had expected his unannounced return to garner. He understood he _wanted_ to throw his former roommate off his game by reappearing in front of him without warning. Mac pissed him off, getting along without him while Dennis was busy rotting away in North Dakota. He could feel his frustration beginning to build again. His mounting fury boiled just beneath the surface, like an unwatched pot left on the stove. Dennis could taste the metallic tang of his anger, indignant insults weighing heavily on the tip of his tongue when he sensed Dee’s bird-like presence, hovering behind the bar like a specter. Her matching blue eyes bored into the back of his head and Dennis could hear her piercing voice in the back of his mind, warning him to keep himself in check. _For now._

Dennis swallowed thickly, choking down his rage like a gob of phlegm stuck in the back of his throat. He affixed a smile to his face that he hoped seemed natural, but from the looks of discomfort on their features, he had missed the mark. “Mac,” he said evenly, “How’s it going, buddy?”

Mac quickly disentangled his arm from Rex. The other man glanced at him curiously, but said nothing.

“D-Dennis,” he stumbled over his former roommate’s name as if he had forgotten how to say it. His cheeks flushed a pinkish tint and his eyes darted around the bar, as though he was searching for an exit. Well, it seemed like he could still get under Mac’s skin. Dennis fought the urge to let his false smile turn into a cocky smirk. “I didn’t know you were coming back, dude.” Mac said.

“I didn’t tell you.” Dennis replied, matter-of-factly. He had gotten every single one of Mac’s ridiculous texts and there had been hundreds of them over the past several months. Everything from the typical _heys_ and _what ups_ to the lengthy, barely legible drunk texts riddled with misspellings and clearly autocorrected words.

Over time, Dennis had found it more and more difficult to reply. It just wasn’t the same. He couldn’t hear Mac’s voice. Couldn’t listen to the way it would rise two octaves when he was passionate about something. He couldn’t watch the way his birch-colored eyes would start to spark, filling with intense passion, when he got excited or angry. How he couldn’t control the way his entire body would move when he spoke enthusiastically, wriggling like a live-wire, all of his emotions visible and palpable. If Dennis was being honest with himself, he had missed Mac. Although he would sooner lick his deceased ex-wife’s dead tooth than admit it, especially to the man in question.

“Well, um– I’m glad that you’re back, bro.” Mac replied, smiling weakly. He rubbed the back of his neck anxiously. “So, where are you staying then?” he asked, dropping his gaze to his beat-up boots, studying them intensely, as though they held the secrets of the universe.

Dennis frowned deeply, his forehead wrinkling and his eyebrows knitting together with mounting irritation. “Well, Mac.” he spoke slowly and deliberately, trying to force the edge from his voice, but doing a poor job of it. “I expected to sleep in my own apartment.”

Mac let out a harsh laugh, but it was a sharp noise that sounded more like a cough. “Y-Yeah, of course, man.” he responded, swallowing thickly, his throat clicking as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “So, how about we celebrate your return with some drinks?” he suggested, clearly trying to change the subject, his awkward smile still plastered on his face.

“Yeah, sure.” Dennis agreed.

“Get us some booze, bird!” Mac demanded loudly, pointing at Dee, who responded by shooting him a look so cold that it could freeze hot magma. Suddenly, Mac remembered the beefcake standing at his side. He slid his arm back around Rex’s waist, blushing. “You remember Rex, right Den?”

Dennis balled his hands into fists again, clenching and unclenching them slowly. He pictured himself lunging forward and wrapping his slender fingers around Rex’s stupid, beefy throat and squeezing until his perfect face turned mottled and black. He tried to dismiss the thought. He would probably break his exquisite fingers on his dumb, muscled neck. Instead, he forced himself to smile again, although he ended up looking more like a feral dog baring his teeth than a friendly man. “Of course.” the brunette replied pleasantly, although his tone was still frosty. He took a few strides forward and offered his hand to Rex, who grabbed it eagerly. Rex seemed completely oblivious to the ice laced throughout in Dennis’ words.

Rex squeezed Dennis’ hand tightly, shaking it enthusiastically, rattling his arm in the socket. Dennis attempted to match his grip, but failed miserably. The muscular man released his hand and Dennis examined it closely, wondering if Mac’s behemoth boy-toy had broken his perfect fingers.

The other three had not said a word, observing their exchange with the same rapt attention they gave their trashy reality shows.

Frank leaned over the bar towards Dee. “Just like the Real Housewives.” he whispered to his former daughter and the blonde nodded swiftly, taking another sip from the beer clutched in her hand, unable to tear her eyes away from the unfolding drama.

Charlie had seated himself at the counter, popping some two day old peanuts into his mouth and observing them with wide-eyed interest, like he was a movie patron.

“What are you looking at?” Dennis snapped, his amiable persona slipping. “I thought that you were getting us some shots, Dee.”

His sister glowered at him, her identical blue eyes flashing in annoyance, but she did not open her mouth to retort. Instead, she bent underneath the bar and collected six shot glasses, arranging them up in a perfect straight line across the length of the wooden counter. The blonde fished around below the bar until she found a bottle of Jim Beam. It was one of the more expensive bottles of whiskey that they had in the bar. To Dennis’ surprise, it seemed as though she was actually making an effort to celebrate his return.

Dee obtained a small knife and turned the bottle on its side, carefully slicing open the wax seal. She removed the rest of the seal and uncapped the bottle, pouring a generous amount of liquor into each of the glasses. Dennis and Mac migrated towards the bar to retrieve their whiskey, shooting them back in one gulp.

Initially, Dennis had not noticed the grisly gash on Charlie’s forehead. He spotted it when he had gotten closer to the bar counter. It was a thin line, about three inches in length, pink and ridged, extending upward into his messy, chocolate colored hair. He considered asking him about it, but decided that it would be too much trouble and truthfully, he didn’t care all that much.

As Dee slid Charlie his shot and he reached out to take it from her, Dennis noticed their fingers brush against each other. To his utter surprise, he observed his sister’s cheeks flushing petal pink, a delicate blush creeping up the back of her neck and fading into her hairline. It was very subtle. Anyone else would have probably missed it, but Dennis knew Dee better than that. That blush was rare.

He would have abhorred admitting such a thing, but his sister had done pretty well with men after she got her brace removed when they were in college. Despite what he considered her generally subpar appearance, she had still managed to bang genuine hotties like the stupid, ultra-beefcake Rex and the childish, but hunky Ben. Except those relationships had clearly been about sex and the social status that came with having a conventionally attractive fuck buddy, not any genuine romantic sentiment.

When Dee was forming feelings for someone that extended beyond the physical, she would revert to the timid, introverted schoolgirl of her youth. A small, shy smile would dance around her lips when she spoke to the object of her affections. She would periodically tuck her long, flaxen hair behind her ear in nervous habit. An uncharacteristically bubbly giggle would punctuate her speech. It had been an awfully long time since he had seen that besotted look on his twin’s face.

The weirdest part of the entire situation was that Dennis thought that Charlie might actually reciprocate her attraction. He was staring at his sister as though he sincerely thought she was _pretty_ or something. His sage eyes glimmered with something resembling affection as he watched her toss back her shot, gazing at her like the sun shined out her ass. Dennis had only ever seen his tiny cohort look at the Waitress that way in the past. Charlie appeared to be genuinely lovestruck.

It had only been ten short months since he had left Philadelphia and his ugly bird of a sibling was flirting with Charlie Kelly, of all people? Dennis couldn’t help but be interested in something like that. He would most definitely need to keep an eye on it.

*******

Later that night, Rex drove Dennis and Mac back to their apartment.

Dennis had not wanted to allow Rex to drive his Range Rover, but he was the only one of them who had not had anything to drink. Something about carbs and empty calories. _Just stick your finger down your throat._ Dennis thought, sourly.

The apartment was the same as ever.

It felt like he was entering a bubble, frozen in time. Dennis felt as though he had never left Philadelphia at all, like the past ten months were just a fever dream. The memories of North Dakota had already begun to fade, as if he were staring at them through frosted glass. But here, in his old apartment, everything was suddenly sharp and in focus, and for the first time in months, Dennis felt _real_.

He started the familiar path towards his bedroom when a set of strong fingers wrapped around his wrist, pulling him back. Dennis turned to face Mac, who was wearing a sheepish expression, gnawing anxiously on his bottom lip.

“Um, actually Dennis…” Mac sputtered, stumbling over his words. “Rex and I have been uh– you know, sharing the bed.” he explained, gazing up at his on again, off again roommate apologetically. “So, I was thinking you could use the couch tonight?” his inflection portrayed a question, but it was clear to Dennis that it was not a suggestion.

“Mac,” Dennis said his name, carefully. “Is there still only _one bed_ in this apartment?” the curly-haired man inquired and Mac broke eye contact, scrubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

Dennis felt the remains of his resolve shatter like someone throwing a baseball through a glass window.

“And you expect me to sleep on the couch so you can what, Mac– bone in _my_ fucking bed!?” he growled, his voice cracking in anger. Suddenly, Dennis was engulfed in a tidal wave of conflicting emotion. The myriad of feelings that he had spent the past several months suppressing abruptly came rushing to the surface, overrunning his carefully erected emotional dam and spilling out everywhere.

Mac was stuttering out an excuse, but Dennis could only hear the sound of his own blood pulsating in his ears, like the beat of a drum. Everything in his line of sight had faded into nothing, leaving only Mac in crystal clear focus. The world fuzzed out around Dennis, everything swimming together in the way it could only when he was truly and completely enraged.

During these episodes, reality unraveled around him. His skin would prickle with electricity, every single never tingling and spitting, like a flailing electrical cable. Utterly consumed by the expanse of his fury, Dennis could barely remember opening his mouth to speak, to yell. He spat a torrent of insults like venom, looking to wound.

Dennis didn’t remember screaming. In fact, he couldn’t remember any of the things that he had said, only the fiery burn in his esophagus and the way the muscles in his throat flexed when he sprayed insults like a barrage of bullets.

When did he grab Mac by the collar? Dennis was barely aware of what was happening. He could hear Mac shouting, but his words were blunted and faraway, as though he was speaking underwater. He had barely registered it when Rex grabbed him by the shoulders, yanking him off the other man. He only vaguely recalled the tremor in Rex’s voice when he ordered him to take a walk.

Suddenly, he was on the street.

The rage pounded thickly at the sides of his skull. He started wandering the city with no real idea of where he was headed. His mind was clouded with fury, like swirling gray storm clouds filling his brain. His frantic thoughts melded together into one massive hard ball of intense anger, consuming him completely.

Dennis thought about going back to the apartment. He pictured kicking at the door until it splintered underneath his foot. He imagined himself scratching Mac across the face, slicing his skin into bloody ribbons like feral junkyard cat. He envisioned retrieving the metal bat from his room and bashing Rex’s stupid, thick skull until it caved in. He struggled to swallow down his manic fury, like a lump of mucus trapped in his throat.

He decided that he desperately needed another drink.

*******

The door of Paddy’s slammed open with such force it bounced off the frame and Dee jumped out of her skin. She dropped the glass that she was busy cleaning but managed to swoop down and catch it deftly before it shattered into pieces at her feet. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Dee stood up in time to witness her brother sweeping into the bar like a whirling inferno, his anger radiating off him like a toxic gas. She braced herself for the impending explosion.

“ _He’s such a fucking asshole!_ ” Dennis seethed, striding over to the bar and slamming his palms onto the wooden lip of the counter. “Get me some fucking shots.” he demanded, not making eye contact.

“We’re closed, boner.” Dee informed him, a devious smirk tugging at the corners of her lips. She knew that toying with Dennis when he was in such a foul mood was not unlike dancing in front of a group of hungry lions dressed in nothing but a dress comprised entirely of raw meat. But really, what sister could resist having a little fun with their annoying sibling? Even if the action was equivalent to prodding a hornet’s nest with a stick.

Dennis made a loud shrieking noise, like a tea kettle on the burner. Dee snorted, trying to smother the sound with her hand. She searched the shelves below the bar, grabbing four shot glasses with her fingers, two to each hand, and lining them up along the surface of the bar as she had done earlier that day. She bent down to uncap the Wild Turkey and filled the glasses to the brim. She set the bottle aside and snatched the glass on the far right, tossing it back with practiced ease, enjoying the familiar sting of the alcohol as it slid down her throat.

Dennis finally released his white-knuckled grip on the edge of the bar and seized both shots in his fists, downing them one after the other. He slammed them back onto the wooden surface of the bar and his slender digits flew up to his temples, massaging them in small circles.

“Trouble in paradise?” Dee inquired, grasping her second shot and throwing it back. She collected the empty glasses, flinging them into the sink with a clatter. _Let tomorrow Dee take care of it._ She thought, knowing that she would probably forget about them by the next morning.

Dennis mumbled a string of angry, unintelligible words. Dee could pick out the phrases _kill him_ and _little bitch_ and not much else. The blonde grabbed a couple of light beers from underneath the bar and uncapped them, sliding one across the counter to her morose twin. If she was going to have to listen to her aggravating brother ramble about himself and his ridiculous relationship issues, she was going to need to be good and _drunk_.

“It’s still my apartment, Dee.” Dennis griped. The dark-haired man glowered at the bottle clutched in his hand, his piercing blue eyes narrowed into slits, as though he was trying to shatter it into pieces with the power of his mind. “My name is still on the lease.” Dennis continued, “And I come home after a few measly months to find my roommate sleeping in _my_ bed with some– some–” he struggled to find the words, choosing instead to take a long pull of his beer. “Some brainless, classless ingrate who looks like an Easter Island head.” he concluded, finally. He smiled to himself, satisfied with the insult.

Dee snickered. It was painfully clear to her that Dennis was jealous. Truthfully, it was not the first time that she considered that her brother’s affections for Mac might be less than platonic. Though she had not continued to voice the notion after their disastrous “break-up” several years ago, she thought that there was no way that two grown men could be as obsessed with each other as her brother and Mac and still be totally straight.

It didn’t surprise her that Dennis was envious of Rex. Rex was buff and good-looking, with abs that you could snap a board on. He was also the only man stupid enough to find Mac intelligent and interesting.

“You’re just pissed that he moved on.” Dee intoned, sagely. She took another gulp of her beer and released a loud, unladylike belch.

Dennis looked up at her with an expression of disbelief before his sharp features morphed into one of fury. “That’s ridiculous!” he snarled, his tone defensive. His perfectly plucked raven brows knitted together in mounting irritation. “I’m just pissed that my bastard of a friend is kicking me out of my own apartment just so he can fuck some tiny-dicked ‘roid head.” he spat, the wrinkles in his forehead deepening as he glowered at her.

Dee grinned into the mouth of her beer. Mac and Dennis had always had some kind of strange, fucked up relationship. They were clearly toxic for each other, feeding off of one another like pernicious symbiotes. The two of them were trapped in a virulent cycle, unable to separate from the other entirely. Mac had always been more than a little obtuse, Dee would not contradict that assertion, but Dennis could be just as bad. Her sibling was stubborn, stupid, and often blind to his own feelings. Instead, he compartmentalized his feelings and separated them from the actual thing causing his ire. Perhaps it was a family trait.

“Bullshit.” she interjected, shaking her head so roughly her golden hair smacked her cheeks. “You’re upset that Mac doesn’t need you. That he can exist without you.”

Dennis uttered an offended noise that sounded something like a turkey gargling gravel. “Mac absolutely needs me!” he asserted, his voice cracking slightly. His cheeks had turned a muddy red, making him resemble a pissed off tomato. Dee wondered idly if she also looked that blotchy when she got upset. Gross. “He’s a fucking stupid ass man-child. He can barely do his own laundry!”

“Mac’s an idiot, no arguments there.” Dee agreed, sipping at her beer. “But you expected him to totally fall apart without you here and he didn’t.” she pointed out, gesticulating with her beer, splashing some onto the counter that she had just cleaned. Dennis did not say a word, he just scowled at her, as though his piercing gaze would knife through her. She ignored him, continuing her totally unrequested explanation, “He did fine. He even got himself a beefy bang buddy. And you hate that.”

The Reynolds Twins were more alike than either of them would have ever been willing to admit.

Beyond their shared good looks: the crystalline blue eyes, sharp elfish features, and lean waifish bodies, they shared their pain. They grew up with the same twisted parents. Sure, their drug-addled mother had preferred Dennis, but that had left him teetering on a pedestal, terrified that he would fall off and come crashing down into the dirt with the rest of the peasants, leaving him hollow and broken like his failure of a sister.

In spite of their striking features and near perfect physiques, they shared a deep insecurity about their appearances. An overwhelming narcissism punctuated by crippling self-doubt. Addiction. Alcoholism. A matching inability to confront their issues, coupled with a strong desire to point out others’ shortcomings. In reality, they were mirrors, cut from the same jagged glass. Dirty and streaked with decades of grime. They hated each other because they could see their own faults mirrored in their twin.

Dee knew her brother in a way that no one else ever could, not even Mac. But the problem with twin synchronicity was that it went both ways.

“And what about your _interpersonal problems_?” Dennis inquired. His severe blue eyes narrowed dangerously and suddenly Dee felt totally exposed, like a specimen on display, her chest cracked open and soul laid bare. Her brother studied her closely, analyzing every tiny movement for clues as to what she might be hiding. She knew that his scrutinizing gaze could easily see through the sheer veneer that she had manufactured to guard her emotions.

“W-What are you talking about?” she asked, speaking much too loudly, her voice echoing throughout the empty bar.

Dennis rolled his eyes. “I’m talking about you and Charlie, you dumb bird.” he snarked. Dee felt suddenly cold, as though someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over her head. By now, Dennis was well on his way towards getting utterly and thoroughly smashed and his words were beginning to fuzz around the edges in his intoxication. Still, he continued to speak, unbidden, “You’ve been acting weird around him since I got back. It’s written all over your face.” her brother sneered, his pale blue eyes were starting to glaze over and lose focus with drunkenness, but Dee knew that he had caught her. “You’re damn lucky the rest of the gang are a bunch of idiots because you’re a terrible actress.”

Dee let out an offended screech. She tried to stifle it with another belt of her beer, but Dennis pressed on, “I’m surprised that you’re not gagging when you talk to him. But really, Deandra. _Dirtgrub_? I knew you had shit taste in men but _come on_.” he finished, laughing at her as she fumed.

“You’re one to talk.” Dee spat, flipping her blonde hair indignantly. “You’re the one who wants to be Mrs. Ronald McDonald!” she claimed, pointing an accusing finger at him.

Dennis’ eyes bulged out of the sockets and Dee could see the vein in his forehead starting to pulsate with agitation. “Why would I take his last name!?” Dennis shouted, exasperatedly. Realizing what he had just said, crimson spread across his sharp cheek bones. “I mean– what I’m trying to say is–” he fumbled. “Nevermind.” he finished, letting out a sigh, slender shoulders slumping in defeat. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on anymore.”

“Right there with ya, bro.” Dee said, leaning across the bar and clinking her bottle against his.

“I think we might be fucked, Dee.”

“Oh, most definitely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know nothing of real estate in North Dakota, but the internet tells me the average 2-Bedroom apartment is much cheaper than one in Philadelphia. 
> 
> I am a sucker for the Trash Twins bonding. I think they are way more alike than anyone gives them credit for and I wanted to explore that a little. 
> 
> Also, here's the beginning of the Mac/Dennis side-plot for the fans of the ship. It is not a major focus in this story, but I am a fan of The Prophecy and couldn't resist throwing it in just a bit. 
> 
> I also really like how fucking stupid Charlie is about anything science related.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Gang prepares for a scheme. Dee and Charlie cross a line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Somebody to Love" is credited to Queen

_6:00 PM_

_On a Friday_

_Philadelphia, PA_

“So, we have a problem.” Frank said in a hushed tone. The gang was surrounding him at the bar, leaning over the counter conspiratorially. Rex was posted up front near the door, the only one of the group actually that was working.

“What’s up?” Mac inquired. He was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Dennis, trying vainly to avoid brushing against the other man, lest he trigger him into a frothing madness. Dennis’ comely features were pinched in a sour expression and he was shooting periodic sideways glances at the man on his right. Dee could not help but find the entire display amusing, although she said nothing to that effect.

“There’s a new bar that just opened up down the street.” Frank explained, “It’s called a gastropub.” he told them. The portly man leaned forward on the stool so that he could dig a crumpled-up piece of paper out of his back pocket. He flattened it out on the counter and the other four leaned over in order to read the writing on it. It was a cheap, flashy flyer for a place called The Black Foot. “Some weird place that serves specialty beer.”

Dennis took one look at the flyer and wrinkled his nose in distaste, as though he had caught a whiff of dog shit. “ _Hipsters_.” the curly-haired brunette spat, incredulously.

“What’s specialty beer?” Charlie asked, “What makes it special?”

“Craft beers.” Dennis explicated, “Weird ingredients. Hot peppers and dried fruit and bizarre shit like that.”

Charlie looked horrified. “They must be stopped.”

“Great!” Mac said, clapping his hands together excitedly. “So, I say we attack this from different angles. One team will need to infiltrate the kitchen and fuck with their recipes–”

“Wait,” Dee interrupted, “If they’re selling so well, why don’t we steal them?” she asked the group and the men scoffed.

“There is no fucking way that we would ever serve honey-apple beer in this bar!” Dennis snarled, glowering at his sister as though she had just suggested they serve menstrual blood in a beer mug, his eyebrows drawing together with irritation. Dee rolled her eyes. _God forbid we make any money_. She thought, bitterly.

“They have an open mic.” Frank informed them, “Maybe we could have Charlie perform one of his rape songs. That always clears the bar.” he suggested.

“I don’t write about rape.” Charlie contested.

“Yes, you do.” Mac replied, matter-of-factly, blatantly ignoring the smaller man’s scandalized response. “How about we make Dee sign up with him? She’s terrible.” the muscular brunette added, gesturing to the blonde as though her deficiencies were fact.

Dee opened her mouth to protest, but Mac held up his hand to silence her. In the end, she knew that it would have been pointless to try and argue with him, especially when all five of them were together. She knew from decades of experience that the other four would gang up on her automatically and the ensuing argument would only end with her on the losing side, nursing her wounded pride. Instead, she settled on slapping Mac’s hand as hard as she could manage.

“ _Fuck_!” Mac exclaimed, cradling his bruised hand tenderly and examining it, trying to assess the extent of the damage that her giant hands might have caused him. He glared darkly at Dee for a moment before turning away from her to face the other men and continuing, “So anyway, because I am the brains and clearly the most badass member of the group, I’m going to infiltrate the kitchen. I’ll take Rex with me and–”

“Absolutely not!” Dennis interjected, irately. The rest of the gang stared at him, taken aback by his outburst. The dark-haired man faltered for a moment but managed to recover quickly. He pivoted his head to scowl at his roommate. “I don’t trust you to lead anything.” Dennis snapped, “And Rex is as dumb as a box of rocks. I’m going.” he said with an air of finality.

“Why do _you_ get the final say?” Mac groused, rounding on the slender man. “You’ve been gone for almost a year!” he argued, clearly exasperated. He balled his hands into fists and glowered at Dennis as though he was one second away from popping him in the jaw.

“Because it’s still my bar too, asshole!” Dennis snarled, foaming at the mouth a little, like a rabid fox. The familiar vein in his forehead was beginning to make an appearance, bulging in anger, signaling an impending explosion.

“I can handle this without you, Dennis. I–” Mac started to yell, but Frank cut him off.

“Stop fighting. Jesus fucking Christ.” Frank cried, throwing his hands up in frustration. “You two are going together. We need Rex to watch the bar. He’s more responsible than all four of you put together.”

The other four frowned, glancing at one another, but they kept their mouths shut because they knew he was right.

*******

“So, what kind of song do you wanna sing?” Charlie asked.

The two of them were alone in Charlie and Frank’s shithole of an apartment, discussing their part in the upcoming hipster gastropub scheme. The tousle-haired brunette was seated on his grimy, stained couch, busying himself by plinking away at the old, electric keyboard that he had balanced precariously on his knees. Meanwhile, Dee was pacing the length of the living room, back and forth. The leggy blonde was restless and trying to expel some of her pent-up anxious energy.

She glanced at the small man sitting on the ratty couch. Charlie was dressed in a ragged, moss-green tee shirt with a screen print of a wolf howling at the moon plastered across the front and a pair of worn, plaid pajama pants, which were an item of clothing that she was not aware he possessed. She was under the impression that he only owned grody, piss-stained long-johns.

The apartment was more or less back to normal.

Over the past couple weeks, various piles of trash had cropped up throughout the flat. Once again, there were dozens of cans of cat food scattered over every imaginable surface, and a few stray cats had started sleeping in the sink or sunbathing on the windowsill. The walls were papered with Charlie’s paintings. There was no trace of the Waitress left anywhere in the house. Dee thought that the entire place was utterly disgusting, but so very Charlie. Dee was delighted to have her apartment all to herself again, but there was another part of her that was just happy to see the Real Charlie again, living and thriving in his garbage dump of a flat.

“I don’t really know.” Dee admitted, “I’m a great actor. A natural talent, I don’t think my innate skills will allow me to make it shitty.” the slender blonde explained, crossing her arms over her chest indignantly. In truth, she was starting to get really fucking tired of the rest of the gang treating her like she was a talentless failure. It wasn’t as if any of _them_ were huge fucking successes. Besides, barely anyone succeeded in show business. Failure and disappointment were constant bedfellows. Honestly, she was really no different from any other actor struggling to make a name for themselves. Those assholes just didn’t respect the craft.

“You could try puking on stage.” Charlie suggested, snarkily. He side-eyed her, a playful smile dancing around his lips.

Dee pursed her lips, her eyebrows drawing together in irritation. “We could always sing Dayman like you and Dennis did. I recall how well _that_ went.” she replied, sarcastically. The smile dropped from Charlie’s face and he pouted at her, his bottom lip protruding like a petulant child. Dee strode over to the couch, plopping down next to him. “This is _so_ stupid.” she sighed, running her white-tipped nails through her long, flaxen locks. “I don’t want to get booed.” she disclosed, her slender shoulders drooping as she moped.

Charlie couldn’t help but notice how pretty she was, even when she was sulking. He wondered what might happen if he leaned over, grabbed her face and pressed his lips into hers. Would she push him away? Kiss him back? The last time they kissed had been over two years ago and it had been drunken and hazy, fueled by alcohol and def poetry. If he was being honest, he remembered it as amazing, electrifying even, but they had agreed not to talk about it. So, Charlie had banished the memory to the back of his mind, where he had compartmentalized it into a tiny little box and buried it in the recesses of his psyche. But lately, the memory of them kissing had kept popping up unbidden and his brain was filled with thoughts of Dee. Her smell, like lavender. How small and slender her frame felt in his hands as they glided along her curves. He thought that he might be going crazy.

Abruptly, he turned to face her. “How about we say fuck ‘em?”

Dee gawked at him, confused. He pressed on, “Like, why don’t we write a good song?” he suggested. She blinked at him, her large cornflower-blue gaze clearly perplexed.

“Isn’t that going to achieve the opposite effect?” Dee asked, one of her eyebrows quirking inquisitively.

“Who gives a shit?” Charlie replied, reaching out and grabbing her hands. He turned so that he could stare directly into her eyes. His emerald eyes were glimmering with determination and she felt utterly exposed, as though his gaze was penetrating her soul. “We can think of something else to do to the bar. Let’s prove these assholes wrong. Let’s make music!” he said excitedly, squeezing her hands.

Dee was too shocked to speak for a moment. Sure, Charlie gave her a hard time sometimes, but the whole gang did that, and when it came down to it, he had always been the one who was most encouraging of her dreams. He had willingly cast her as the leading lady in his musical, even if he had inadvertently framed her as a pedophile. They had improvised def poetry together in her apartment and he had been hyped to perform with her, until they got _distracted._

Charlie waited for her response, gazing at her expectantly, and Dee realized that she had been quiet far too long. She smiled, squeezing his hands back and replied, “Let’s do it.”

Charlie grinned.

*******

“Mac, take off those ridiculous sunglasses. You look stupid as shit.” Dennis hissed under his breath.

The other man was dressed in one of his patented cut-off tee shirts and the leather duster, which swept around his feet like a black shroud. His chestnut brown hair was slicked back and his eyes were obscured by a pair of Ray-Bans. He looked like a discounted version of Keanu Reeves in _The Matrix_ and Dennis was two seconds away from strangling him to death with his bare hands.

“Dude, I’m incognito.” Mac explained, karate chopping the air for emphasis. “This way, those hipster assholes won’t know that I’m ocularly assessing their shitty bar.” He high-kicked a nearby pole, a loud clang reverberating through the metal. A few passerby paused, peering around in order to ascertain what dickhead was making a ruckus thinking that he was Bruce Lee. Dennis might have been more embarrassed had he not spent the last twenty odd years tolerating Mac’s eccentricities.

“That’s dumb as hell.” Dennis admonished, massaging his temples in a meager attempt to soothe his growing agitation. “Normal people do not wear sunglasses indoors. You’re going to draw more attention that way.” he explicated, puncturing his words with sharp thrusts of his hands. Mac scoffed, opening his mouth to say something, but he was cut off abruptly when he walked directly into Dennis, who had stopped short. Mac rubbed his bruised nose and turned to look up at the building that his on-again, off-again roommate was staring up at.

It was a fairly nondescript store front with an alternating pattern of red and brown brick. It was not entirely unlike Paddy’s, with a huge black sign hanging over the door with a font that looked like it had been stenciled on in chalk. The text read: The Black Foot.

Dennis turned to face Mac.

The tension between the two was so thick it was nearly strangling. Dennis advanced towards the other man slowly, as though he was approaching a cornered, stray cat. He reached up gently and placed his slender fingers on the side of his roommate’s sunglasses and Mac tensed visibly, fearful that the comely brunette might slash him across the face with his perfectly manicured nails. Instead, Dennis slid his sunglasses off of his nose. He folded them, tucking them into the collar of Mac’s sleeveless tank top. “There,” he said, “You look nicer when people can see your eyes.” Dennis flashed him a smile and Mac’s heart jumped to his throat.

Mac swallowed audibly, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “L-Let’s go.” he managed to choke out. The muscular brunette moved forward mechanically, pulling the door open and holding it for Dennis. The other man smirked at him, his plucked to the wire eyebrow quirking suggestively.

The Black Foot was much nicer on the inside.

The gastropub was lit with a calming, golden light that emanated from huge, circular bulbs that lined all the walls. There was a long, wooden bar counter on the left side of the building, dotted with artificially worn navy stools. The seats were filled with patrons half their age sporting hair that was every color under the rainbow. The wall behind the bar was painted with blackboard paint, covered in chalk scribblings listing beers with ingredients like chili peppers and maple syrup. The entire place was filled with the overwhelming scent of hops.

There was a small wooden stage on the back wall where three twenty-somethings with shaggy hair that looked like it had been hacked by a toddler with scissors, dressed in even rattier clothes than Charlie, were playing twangy, mellow music on a drum and ukulele. Mac’s face scrunched up in distaste. He leaned over to Dennis, “Do you think that Dee and Charlie can be worse than these assholes?” he asked in a whisper and Dennis snickered quietly.

“Of course,” he reassured him. “Nobody is worse than my talentless sister.”

Mac snorted, muffling it behind his hand. This felt good. It almost felt like everything was back to normal. He could almost forget how Dennis had run out on the gang, fleeing across the country to escape Philly. To escape _him_.

Dennis pointed out a booth on the far wall and Mac allowed his attractive cohort to lead him on a winding path to the empty table. They slid into the seats across from one another.

A waitress appeared, seemingly materializing out of thin air. She was tall and willowy, with wavy brown hair that feel past her shoulders, tipped in a bright blue at the ends. Her eyeliner was thick, black, and winged. She had a thin silver rod pierced through her eyebrow and another stud in her lip.

“Hey guys, welcome to The Black Foot.” she greeted them, smiling. “My name is Wynter and I’ll be serving you today.” Her voice was slow and syrupy, like molasses. She sounded like every crunchy hippie character in a Saturday morning cartoon, sporting a thick Californian accent even though they were over two thousand miles away from the Golden State. Wynter slid two menus, printed on wrinkled parchment that had been laminated, onto the table in front of them. “We have an assortment of bar snacks and an extensive array of specialty beers.” she told them, “Our special this month is called Harvest. It’s a dark ale with hints of pumpkin and nutmeg.” the brunette explained, cheerily. The two men stared at her like she had just informed them that the ale had been brewed with dead babies.

Her smile faltered slightly and her hooded eyes went a little wide. “Um, I’ll give you a few minutes.” she said quickly, skittering away.

Mac and Dennis looked down at their menus, wearing matching frowns.

“What the hell are tofu wings?” Mac asked, incredulously. “Tofu doesn’t have wings.” he grumbled, slapping the menu for emphasis.

Dennis nodded in agreement. “And what’s with these fucking names?” he sneered, “Chocolate Orgasm? Horny Devil? I swear I’ve seen these titles on Skinamax.” the curly-haired man snarked, shaking his head in disappointment. “These millennials need everything to be an _experience_.” he sniped, placing a set of menacing air quotes around the word experience. “Whatever happened to Bud? Corona?”

They placed their orders with the noticeably less chill waitress and waited in awkward silence, staring at one another across the table, neither of them knowing what to say. The band had been replaced by a very intense black woman who was dressed all in black, sporting a beret, perched on top of her wayward curls. She was performing some sort of interpretive dance with colored scarves. She looked like a disgruntled magician.

There were a few aborted attempts at conversation, but they all fell flat.

Mac and Dennis expelled twin sighs of relief when Wynter reappeared, placing a plate of fried macaroni balls and two beers in mason jars between them. Mac took one of the balls, stuffing it into his mouth whole, and proceeded to choke on it. He managed to swallow it with some difficulty, burning his tongue pretty badly in the process.

Dennis took a sip of his beer and his dark brows drew together in agitation. “Just as I thought, you shouldn’t put _rock salt_ in beer.” he complained, his delicate features contorting in disgust and Mac saw a flash of the fourteen year old boy that he met behind the cafeteria all those years ago. Dennis had made the same face when he took his first hit off the spliff that Mac had offered him before coughing up a lung while Mac laughed at him.

Things hadn’t been the same since Dennis had left Philadelphia. Mac had been deadly serious when he told the other man that he would raise his son with him, more serious than he wished he were. Despite what the rest of the gang might have thought about his powers of denial, Mac was well aware that his feelings for the man seated across from him had crossed the line beyond friendship and into romantic a long, long time ago. Hell, maybe he had never really viewed Dennis platonically.

Coming out had been a gigantic step for him and had helped him to recognize his emotions more clearly. It had been nice to reconnect with Rex. Rex was fun and sweet – not to mention a total hottie – so why did he still dream about Dennis? He had a million questions that he wanted to ask the curly-haired brunette.

 _What the hell_. Mac thought, to himself. What was the worst that could happen? Dennis couldn’t possibly break his heart anymore, could he?

Finally, Mac broke the silence. “Dennis?” He could feel his heart thrumming anxiously in his ears, each beat a deafening pound. The man opposite him met his gaze, one eyebrow quirking curiously. Mac knew that he had to act now, or he would pussy out forever.

“Yeah?”

Mac swallowed harshly, his Adam’s apple clicking. “W-Why did you leave?” he asked him, stammering. His throat suddenly felt dry and he took a swig of his beer. His face contorted in distaste. It tasted more like a pumpkin spice latte than a beer.

Mac watched Dennis closely. Dennis was studying the swirling liquid in his mason jar, his crystalline blue eyes dark and intense. His face displayed a series of emotions that flickered by too quickly for Mac to make sense of them. Eventually, he spoke, “It was… too much.” Dennis mumbled, not meeting his gaze.

“I don’t understand. What was too much?”

“I don’t know.” Dennis replied, his voice strained. He was clearly becoming more stressed with every passing second. He had set his jar back down and was anxiously tapping his fingernails on the side of the glass. “You, I guess. Me. The situation.” he sighed, running anxious fingers through his wavy hair. “Mandy had just shown up and sprung some _kid_ on me. Everything was getting too– too real.” he rambled, “Then you offered this like– commitment to me and I-I had to go.” he finished, running his fingers through his hair again. Dennis looked so tightly wound that Mac feared he might snap in half.

Mac frowned. It was clear that he had pushed Dennis too far. Their friendship functioned best when they avoided getting too emotional – too real. Still, he was immensely hurt by his friend’s declaration. Dennis acted like being with him was the worst possible thing that he could imagine. So bad, in fact, that he had felt the need to move fifteen hundred miles just to get away from him.

“So, why did you come back?” Mac asked, his voice barely audible. Dennis looked up to meet his gaze and their eyes locked. A fiery charge sizzled between them.

A nearly imperceptible smile flashed across Dennis’ features. “I’m still trying to figure that out.”

*******

Charlie was back in his private sanctuary of the men’s bathroom.

He admired his reflection in the mirror for a minute, tracing his fingers along the thin scar leading up into his hairline. It had been a few weeks since the stitches had been removed and the gash had healed into a long, reddish-pink scar. It didn’t hurt anymore, but occasionally he found himself running his fingers along the slash and picturing that day and how sweet and considerate that Dee had been to him.

He couldn’t help but recall the look of concern in her striking, cornflower-blue eyes when she realized that he was hurt. The sensation of her thin, white-tipped fingers brushing through his hair, setting his nerves on fire. The way that she had helped him fill out his forms at the hospital without mocking him for his illiteracy. He still couldn’t believe that she had played along when the nurse mistook them for a married couple. He remembered the way that her hand had felt in his, firm and reassuring. Charlie realized that he was blushing.

How had it felt two years ago? To kiss her, touch her, feel her heat against his body when they–

 _No! No! No!_ Charlie shook his head forcefully, trying to shake the images from his head like a rain-soaked dog shedding water. These kinds of daydreams were no good. After their spontaneous copulation, the two of them had agreed to never speak of what happened again. Charlie had forcefully buried the memories deep down inside of himself, locking them up and throwing away the key.

Without the Waitress consuming his every thought, Charlie had been feeling a little lost. She had been a major part of his daily routine for over a decade and her absence had left him with a gigantic hole in his life that he had no idea what to do with. He had never realized that there were so many hours in the day.

More and more over the past couple of weeks, Charlie had found himself wandering the streets to Dee’s apartment and clambering up the stairs to her door. She would answer with a frown plastered on her face and make a show out of complaining about the inconvenience, but in the end, she always stepped aside and let him into her apartment.

Sometimes, the two of them would watch action movies together. Other nights, they would play video games on the ancient PS2 that Charlie had talked Frank into letting him buy from a pawn shop. A couple times, Charlie had managed to score a little weed and the two of them would smoke up together and listen to def poetry on YouTube.

Usually, around four in the morning, Dee would push herself up and climb off the loveseat to go into her room and retrieve a blanket from her bed, tossing it to him. But every so often, sleep would creep up on the two of them subtly, swiftly overtaking them and they would wake up the next morning with their bodies intertwined on Dee’s too small couch.

Charlie and Dee never spoke about those rare mornings where they found themselves entwined together on the couch, but for the rest of the morning, they would struggle to maintain eye contact for longer than a few minutes without turning red.

Sometimes, it felt like he never stopped thinking about Dee. Even now, while he was guiding the long, black hose of the toilet snake through the muck filled pipes, she consumed his every thought. Her cute, toothy smile. Her long, silky hair, the color of fresh honey. The way she laughed when it was just the two of them, loud and cloying and free.

Had Dee always been so attractive? Charlie couldn’t remember when he had started thinking of her that way. Truthfully, he had never been much good at recognizing his own feelings. More often than not, they crept up on him and by the time he realized what was happening, he was too far gone to do anything about it.

Charlie had always just done whatever he wanted, fuck the consequences, but this was _Dee_ he was talking about. He couldn’t just throw caution to the wind and make a play for her. This was nothing like his infatuation with the Waitress. If he – they – fucked it up, it could jeopardize the entire dynamic of the gang. He had always figured that Mac and Dennis might bang it out eventually, but him and Dee? That was dangerous.

And yet…

*******

_Dee got her brace off during the twins’ second year of college._

_Charlie and Mac – who now went by his chosen nickname exclusively – had gotten a call from Dennis telling them that his afternoon classes had been cancelled and inquiring if the two of them wanted to come to campus so that they could go up to his dorm room and get wrecked. Charlie wondered why Dennis didn’t just ask one of his cool new frat brothers that he was always bragging about, but when he tried to ask Mac about it, he just told him to shut the fuck up. His childhood friend had said something or another about Dennis introducing them to slutty college chicks, but Charlie had his doubts that Mac really had nubile co-eds on his mind._

_The three of them were chilling in the quad underneath a huge oak tree, chain smoking and shooting the shit. Charlie and Mac were sitting on a bench while Dennis paced in front of them, talking animatedly, regaling them with tales of his various exploits and seductions. Mac was listening raptly, but Charlie’s mind was starting to wander._

_Charlie felt very anxious on a college campus. Everyone at UPenn looked so clean and put together. They dressed in expensive, brand name clothes, and carried heavy books whose letters danced around whenever he tried to comprehend them. It made Charlie feel ugly and exposed, as though there was a flashing neon sign hanging over his head screaming: WHITE TRASH! WHITE TRASH!_

_Dennis was roughly halfway through a story about boning some random freshman on one of those steel tables they had in the science labs, when someone called his name from across the grassy field. Charlie’s eyes followed the shout to settle on possibly one of the hottest women he had ever seen, who was waving at them enthusiastically from across the campus._

_She started jogging in their direction, all long legs and sunny hair, and Charlie couldn’t understand why Dennis looked like he had swallowed a lemon when a vision of loveliness was trotting towards them._

_When the golden-haired goddess got close enough for Charlie to make out her facial features his jaw dropped. It was_ Dee _. She looked downright amazing, like a whole new person. The blonde was dressed in a skimpy black tank-top that plunged low, revealing her chest and the delicate lines of her collar bones. Her tight jeans clung to her slender hips like a lover’s caress and her legs went on for miles. In all the years that he had known her, Charlie had never realized that she was so svelte, tall and willowy with the delicate features of a fantasy elf. Suddenly, his mouth felt dry and ashy, as if he had eaten the cigarette in his hand rather than smoked it._

_“Hey, boners!” Dee greeted the other three, skidding to a stop in front of the boys. “Dennis, you didn’t tell me that your boyfriend was coming to visit.” she snarked, laughing heartily at her own joke. Mac and Dennis gave her matching looks of derision. “Nice to see you, Ronnie.” the blonde twin teased._

_“It’s Mac now, you dumb bitch!” he snapped and Dee laughed him off, turning to Charlie._

_“Hey Dirtgrub.” she greeted him playfully, smiling at him, her bright blue eyes twinkling. “I like all of this.” Dee complimented, circling her own mouth with her index finger._

_Charlie felt a blush crawling across his cheeks. He had decided to allow his beard to grow in a few months ago when he ran out of money for razors and discovered that he actually liked the way it made him look. His fake ID was never questioned anymore. Charlie rubbed the back of his reddening neck, trying to ignore the way his heart was beating rapidly in his chest._

_“Th-Thanks.” he stammered, and he could feel Mac and Dennis staring at him, their gazes penetrating and inquisitive. Charlie scrambled to come up with a decent reply, desperately searching for the things that he wanted to say. In all honesty, he really wanted to compliment her, to tell her all the words that were swirling around in his mind, but suddenly he couldn’t seem to grasp at any of them long enough to string together a proper sentence. The wiry brunette thought that his long-time friend looked absolutely gorgeous. Dee was beautiful, regal, “Like a bird.” The words were out of his mouth before his brain had the chance to catch up._

_The others blinked at him, dumbstruck. The silence between them was deafening, but before Charlie could open his mouth to clarify, Mac and Dennis snapped out of their trance and started to laugh._

_“Oh my God, you’re so right!” Mac chortled, his entire body shaking with unrelenting laughter. “She totally looks like a bird!” he guffawed, clutching at his sides._

_Dennis was doubled over, his slender body quaking with a seemingly never-ending barrage of giggles. “That’s your name now!” her brother choked out in between strangled laughs, pointing a mocking finger at his sibling. “Bird!” he snorted. He struggled to stand up straight, wiping a few tears from the corners of his sky-blue eyes as he sniggered._

_A curtain closed over Dee’s features. She turned to Charlie, glowering at him, but Charlie could see traces of hurt reflected in her pained gaze. The corners of her pretty, pink lips dragged down in a frown. In an instant, her bright blue eyes, which had been shimmering with amusement just a moment before, turned cold and flinty. He could see her beginning to erect her walls. The same way she had in high school whenever the popular kids started in on her, calcifying herself against the oncoming onslaught of insults._

_She spun on her brother, “You look like a bird.” she shot back, indignantly. “We’re twins, so if I’m a bird, so are you.” Dee sniped, pointing an accusing finger at her twin. Dennis scoffed._

_“He does not!” Mac protested, instantly leaping to the other man’s defense. He hopped to his feet angrily and Charlie was afraid he might lunge at her. It wouldn’t be the first time that Mac had tried to physically fight her. “You’re built like an ostrich!” he snapped. Dennis started to snicker again and the two of them burst into fresh peals of laughter._

_In an instant, Charlie was overcome with a wave of overwhelming anxiety that was threatening to drown him. He gnawed at the inside of his cheek until the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. He really hadn’t meant to set Mac and Dennis off, but now that they had zeroed in on Dee, they were going to be merciless. The slight brunette knew from personal experience that he couldn’t interfere without drawing their malice onto him. Mac and Dennis were like sharks – sensing blood in the water and attacking it with unparalleled viciousness, leaving nothing left. So, Charlie kept his mouth clamped tightly shut and wished that he were anywhere but there._

_Charlie observed as Dee’s shoulders stiffened, her back growing rigid. Her face flushed an unattractive shade of vermillion and he could see the muscles in her jaw twitching as she ground her teeth together in growing frustration._

_Suddenly, Dee exploded. “Fuck you!” she shouted at them, her tone venomous. Abruptly, she spun on her heel and stalked back towards the nearest building. Charlie watched her leave amidst Mac and Dennis’ seemingly endless laughter._

_Later that night, as Charlie lay flat on his back on the floor of Dennis’ dorm room, drunkenly studying the ceiling as it swirled overhead, he finally allowed his thoughts to return to their beautiful blonde cohort._

_The image of her face swam in front of his sage-colored eyes. He couldn’t drive away the image of how she had looked at him on the quad when he accidentally made her the target of the gang’s cruelty. Her delicate features pinched with obvious hurt, striking powder-blue eyes filled with sadness and betrayal. He hated it when she glared at him like that._

_Dee had looked so fucking pretty. She really did resemble a bird. A beautiful and elegant bird, like a swan. Gorgeous and untouchable. Charlie knew deep down that he could never tell his friends that he thought that Dee looked stunning without her bulky, metal brace. Truthfully, he had always been tangentially aware of how pretty Sweet Dee was, but he had never allowed himself to admit that he was attracted to her, even in the solace of his own thoughts. Mac and Dennis would never understand him. He knew that he would have to continue to keep his real feelings about her to himself, hidden in the recesses of his heart._

_With a long, dejected sigh, Charlie began to drift into welcome unconsciousness._

*******

When Charlie exited the bathroom, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm, he expected to find the bar deserted. Instead, he was surprised to discover Dee waxing the counter. She had 90s pop playing over a set of Bluetooth speakers perched on one of the stools and she was humming along, singing snatches here and there.

Charlie watched in amusement while Dee boogied behind the bar, shaking her tight little ass in his direction. She spun around in a little half-circle and upon spotting him watching her, emitted an ear-piercing shriek, dropping the washcloth that she was holding to the ground.

“Jesus Christ, Charlie.” she screeched, clutching at her heaving breast, her cheeks tinted with pink. “You scared the shit out of me.” she told him, “I forgot that you were even here.” Dee admitted, panting, clearly embarrassed that he had caught her in the middle of a private dance session.

“Don’t let me stop you.” Charlie teased, smirking at her. She pursed her lips, giving him a sour look. Charlie let the snake slide off his shoulder and fall to the ground. He strode over to the bar and plopped onto one of the red stools, unable to stop smiling at her.

“You should put that gross thing away.” she chastised him, grabbing two beers from the cooler and uncapping them both, handing one to Charlie. He accepted it from her, still smiling, and took a welcome gulp.

“So, Britney Spears, huh?”

“Only sometimes.”

Charlie’s grin widened. If he were being totally honest, he would have told her that his guilty pleasure since high school had been the Spice Girls, but he would not have admitted to that even with a car battery attached to his scrotum.

Dee frowned, her eyebrows knitting together. She walked over to her iPod, bending over the counter and quickly changing the song. Charlie recognized the soothing sounds of Holland Oates. He laughed to himself. He still couldn’t believe that Mac thought that it was _two_ people. What a fucking idiot.

They drank for a while, shooting the shit, carefully avoiding talking about anything too personal.

After several drinks, Dee was getting tipsy and beginning to lose her filter. When a Madonna song came on, she inquired, “Hey Charlie?” He looked up at her. “What did you do for prom?”

Charlie frowned deeply. Why was Dee bringing up high school all of a sudden? Charlie was embarrassed of high school. Like the rest of the gang, he had wrapped up the vast majority of his memories of school in a thick layer of delusion, shielding himself from his own mediocrity. On the night of their senior prom, he had been all alone. Mac had, of course, followed after Dennis like the lovesick puppy that he was. He had even gone so far to bang his prom date, desperate to get back at the other boy for reasons that he wouldn’t be able to truly admit to himself for another couple of decades.

“I spent it at the arcade.” he admitted, his voice suddenly hollow. “My mom had _friends_ coming over. So, she gave me some money and kicked me out of the house.” Charlie confessed, his tone flat.

Dee winced. Even during high school, most people knew that Charlie’s mom was a whore, but no one had dared to say anything, lest they risk being torn apart by a five foot three psychopath. “I gave a homeless guy half to buy me a Forty and played Duck Hunt until the place closed.” Charlie told her, dropping his gaze to the bar counter.

“Did you ever wish that you were there?” Dee asked, her voice barely above a whisper. Charlie stared back up at her, trying to blink away the drunkenness that was beginning to blur his vision.

Suddenly, he remembered the prom dress that Dee had trotted out several years ago when they had hosted a bevy of underage drinkers. The same bubblegum pink taffeta number with the princess tiara that he imagined she had been so excited to buy as a seventeen year old girl. He pictured her standing in front of a full-length mirror in her room, spinning around to watch the skirts twirl around her ankles. Proud and confident, until a few well placed insults from her mother had torn into her, ripping her already shaky self-esteem to shreds and stamping on the pieces.

Dee had spent what was supposed to be the most magical night of her teenage life sobbing alone in her room, feeling like garbage. The image caused Charlie a pang of sadness. He could empathize with her. In so many ways, the two of them were one in the same. Two outcasts, lonely and desperate to find someplace to belong. To mean something to someone, anyone.

The song clicked over, and Freddie Mercury’s soft, soulful voice filled the empty bar.

 _Can anybody find me somebody to love?  
_ _Ooh, each morning I get up I die a little  
Can barely stand on my feet  
(Take a look at yourself) Take a look in the mirror and cry (and cry)  
Lord, what you're doing to me (yeah yeah)  
I have spent all my years in believing you  
But I just can't get no relief, Lord!  
Somebody (somebody) ooh somebody (somebody)  
Can anybody find me somebody to love?_

Charlie studied Dee closely, admiring the fluid way that her hips started to sway, side to side, with the music. She was so fucking gorgeous, almost ethereal in the soft glow of the bar light. Making an abrupt decision, Charlie chugged the rest of his beer in a few gulps. He placed his hands flat on the counter and launched himself over the bar with surprising coordination, considering how drunk he was.

Dee gaped. “W-What are you doing?” she exclaimed. Charlie grabbed her hands, dragging her out from behind the bar, ignoring her protestations.

_I work hard (he works hard) every day of my life  
I work 'til I ache in my bones  
At the end (at the end of the day)  
I take home my hard earned pay all on my own  
I get down (down) on my knees (knees)  
And I start to pray  
'Til the tears run down from my eyes  
Lord, somebody (somebody), ooh somebody  
(Please) can anybody find me somebody to love?_

“Dance with me.” he told her, grinning at her drunkenly, refusing to let go of Dee’s hands. Charlie’s hands were sweaty and warm, but Dee was not complaining.

She giggled, the apples of her cheeks flushing a pale pink in her intoxication. “That’s dumb, Charlie.” she slurred, “We can’t dance.”

“Of course we can!” he insisted

“We’re too old for that shit, Charlie.” Dee protested, trying to pull away from him, but the wiry brunette was much stronger. He yanked her towards him, pulling their bodies flush against each other, and wrapped his broad hands around her slender waist.

“That’s bullshit, Dee.” Charlie declared, smiling at her. Dee was suddenly very aware of his presence. Of the heat radiating off of his body, like placing your hand over a burner on the stove. Suddenly, she had forgotten how to breathe. “Come on, Dee.” he pressed, “Do prom with me.” Charlie said, breathlessly. His emerald eyes were glistening with a hint of mischievousness. 

Finally, Dee relented, draping her arms over his shoulders. She felt like she was back in middle school. Childish and giddy.

_Everyday (everyday) I try and I try and I try  
But everybody wants to put me down  
They say I'm going crazy  
They say I got a lot of water in my brain  
Ah, got no common sense  
I got nobody left to believe in  
Yeah yeah yeah yeah_

Dee’s body was on fire, as though she were pressing it against a furnace. She nestled her head in the crook of his neck and the heat of his breath made her hair stand on end. Her body melted into his and Charlie loved the way her pelvis seemed to fit into his like an extension of himself. She smelled like a mixture of alcohol and her honey-lavender bodywash.

Neither of them was much of a dancer. They shuffled around the empty bar, lacking any real rhythm, but somehow, they were still moving in perfect sync.

The song was punctuated by giggles and Charlie started to narrate the scene for Dee, painting a picture with his words. “Everyone’s looking at you.” he whispered into her ear, his breath was redolent with beer, but Dee didn’t care. “Even Adriano. You look super hot in your dress, like Cinderella.” Charlie couldn’t believe what he was saying and he blamed the booze for his false courage. Dee let out a giggle, a cute tinkling sound that was so uncharacteristic that for a moment Charlie wondered if he had imagined it. “So, how did you want your prom night to go?” Charlie asked, his voice low and husky.

Dee pulled back so that she could look him in the eye. The two of them stared at one another for a moment, an electric charge passing between them. Before she considered what she was doing, Dee circled her arms behind his neck and pulled him into her, closing the gap between them. Their lips crashed together unceremoniously. Much like their first kiss, their intimacy was frenzied, underscored with desperation and deep, and long suppressed feelings that were threatening to consume them both.

Dee’s kisses were aggressive – all lips and teeth and tongue. She prodded Charlie’s lips with the tip of her tongue, and he parted them, permitting her entry. The blonde wound her tongue around his, quickly wrestling his into submission. Charlie’s broad hands wandered the length of her waifish body. He slid his hand underneath the back of her shirt, feeling the heat of her skin beneath his calloused fingers. Touching Dee Reynolds was like wrestling with an inferno, alive and writhing in his hands. Her heat engulfed him, consumed him, and Charlie decided that he could do nothing but submit.

As quickly as it had started, Dee pulled away, disentangling herself from Charlie. She was breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Her long, honey-colored hair was mussed from him running his fingers through it. Her face was tight, brilliant blue eyes filled with shimmering panic.

“Charlie, I am so sorry.” Dee apologized, her voice cracking and she looked like she was on the edge of tears. 

Charlie was befuddled. “Dee, it’s alright I–” he began, but Dee held up a hand to silence him.

“Please stop.” Dee begged, her voice strained. Charlie tried to reach for her again, but she pulled away, crossing her arms over her chest and folding into herself like a paper lantern. “This is just the alcohol talking.” she told him, but he didn’t agree with her at all. “I don’t want to do something you’ll – we’ll – regret when we sober up.”

“Dee–”

“I’m so sorry.” Dee apologized, her words choked with tears that she was valiantly trying not to shed. This was getting to be too much for her to handle. So, Dee chose to revert to the tried and true tactic that had served her well over the years whenever she thought someone might be getting too close: she fled. Dee bolted out of the bar and into the night, leaving Charlie standing alone in an empty bar, confused.

Charlie touched his lips lightly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took a while to decide on a name, but I ended up getting the name for the gastropub by using a "hipster bar name" generator. This chapter has a little bit more Mac/Dennis than the others. I refuse to acknowledge anything from Time's Up in this story. If you have read anything else of mine, you will notice that I have a weird soft spot for characters interacting with poor, put-upon waitstaff. Sorry, Wynter.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang enacts their Hipster Bar Scheme

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is probably the most OOC in the fic, but I think that it's pretty normal for a ship fic based on a show that does not focus much on relationships. I know that Mac and Charlie's little fight is childish, but I kind of wanted to emphasize how even when we grow up, we never really grow up all the way. I watched several tutorials, but ultimately I know fuck-shit about picking locks.

_4:45 PM_

_On a Tuesday_

_Philadelphia, PA_

The stream of shower water poured over Dee’s head, flattening her hair to her head in a wet mass and filling her ears with the soft sound of rushing water, drowning out her thoughts with a welcome wave of white noise.

Dee expelled a long, drawn out sigh, smacking her forehead against the wall with a loud, wet _plap_.

It had been three days since she and Charlie had kissed, and she had been avoiding him like the plague. Once, he had nearly caught her when she was smoking in the alley behind the bar when he came out to toss the trash into the Dumpster. She had feigned a massive coughing fit and fled into the bar, barricading herself in the women’s washroom for over an hour.

Another time, she had been alone behind the counter when he tried to speak with her again. He had approached her carefully, like she was a frightened deer, slow and cautious. Charlie hadn’t so much as said her name when she threw the glass she had been cleaning on the ground, shattering it into pieces. She muttered some excuse about butter fingers and rushed off to retrieve the broom and dustpan.

Dee was being an idiot and she knew it. She couldn’t run away from this problem forever. She was aware that she would have to face Charlie eventually. The logical thing to do, of course, would be to just move past it. To pretend that it had never happened, just like their spontaneous liaison two years ago. The two of them could just chalk it up to alcohol and the seductive power of Freddie Mercury and blow it off completely.

The problem was that Dee wasn’t sure that she could just blow it off this time around. When she kissed Charlie, something inside of her had snapped, releasing a dam of pent-up feelings that she had been actively suppressing since high school. And now that she had opened Pandora’s box, she had no hope of shoving everything back inside.

Dee grabbed the shampoo bottle with a shaking hand, accidentally squeezing out far too much into her palm. She released another lengthy sigh, cursing under her breath, and glopped the entire mess into her hair. That shit was expensive and there was no use wasting it. She dug her bony fingers into her flaxen locks, grinding them into her scalp as though she were trying to scrub her unwanted thoughts from her brain.

Dee Reynolds did not like dealing with serious emotions. Much like her brother, she was prone to intense mood swings and strong emotions that often overwhelmed her, blocking out any semblance of logical thought. During her teenage years, she had discovered that dulling her feelings with alcohol and drugs made them easier to manage. Her mother’s insults did not sting quite as much when she allowed booze to numb her feelings. She had no idea how to face these sorts of emotions without a bottle of vodka.

 _So, what are the facts?_ She asked herself as she washed the shampoo out of her hair, watching the bubbles as they swirled down the drain. The first fact was that she and Charlie had kissed. Dee was not quite sure if she was the one who had initiated it. All she could remember was the way he looked at her, sage-colored eyes glittering with desire. Reflecting back on it now, she realized that she was probably misinterpreting the way he had looked at her as him craving her because that’s what she _wanted_ it to be, not necessarily what it had been.

“I’m such a fucking dumbass.” Dee chided herself, speaking out loud without realizing it. She snatched the bottle of conditioner off the shower caddy and squirted a glob into her hand, working it into her wet tresses. The water was beginning to cool, so she turned the knob roughly to the left until it was nearly scalding.

The second fact was that she had _liked_ kissing Charlie. She wanted to do it again and that was bad. Very bad. Even if he _were_ interested – which she was positive he wasn’t – the others would never allow it. Dee and Charlie were on the bottom rung of the group hierarchy. The outcasts amongst outcasts. If they started dating, the ensuing onslaught of teasing and insults would be never-ending and ruthless, and what relationship could survive that? _No, no, no._ This line of thought was too ridiculous to even entertain.

Dee shut off the faucet and exited her shower in a billow of steam. She pulled a towel off of the rack and quickly dried her body before wrapping her dripping hair up into a towel turban.

She decided that the best course of action was to keep her feelings to herself and avoid shaking the boat. Dee was past pretending that she didn’t have _mushy_ feelings towards Charlie, but there was no way that she could ever _act_ on those feelings. She had to do her best to control herself, utilizing her sweet acting skills to throw the rest of the gang off. Sure, Dennis had an inkling of her infatuation towards their tiny friend, but she knew that he would avoid saying anything in order to ensure that Dee didn’t spill the beans about his weird attraction to his annoying, muscular roommate. She was well aware that the two of them would guard each other’s secrets because they would never confront their feelings if they could help it. Or so she hoped.

Dee wiped the steam off the mirror and scrutinized her reflection. She frowned at her image. She was skinny in all the wrong places, lacking any real semblance of a chest and zero padding on her ass. She was lanky with long, gangly arms like toothpicks and stupidly huge hands. She loathed her hair, messy and wispy, and pale like straw. The crow’s feet tugging at the corners of her blue eyes that made her brother look distinguished only made her look old and haggard.

She flipped off the light and plodded towards her bedroom, leaving a trail of wet footprints on the carpet in her wake. So really, all she had to do was avoid Charlie until he completely forgot about the incident. That shouldn’t take too long. Dee figured that after the gastropub scheme, he would get caught up in a new equally ridiculous plan and disregard her entirely. The same way that most men did.

Dee slipped into a ratty robe, that had once been a vibrant blue, but was now closer to periwinkle due to repeated washings, cinching it around her slender waist. She padded into the kitchen, opening the cabinet and snatching a bottle of red wine, not bothering with a glass. She popped the cork.

 _Okay._ She said to herself as she wandered into the living room, plopping down on the couch and flipping on the TV. _I’m going to drink this entire bottle of wine, have a date with Steven, and crash. Forget all about Charlie Kelly._

Ugh.

*******

After their impromptu kiss, Dee had been doing her best to avoid being alone with Charlie, reluctant to discuss what had occurred between the two of them.

Charlie, on the other hand, hadn’t been able to think about anything but that kiss for days. The taste of her lips. The silky feel of her skin underneath his fingers. The scent of her golden blonde hair. The first time they kissed had been spontaneous, the result of a lethal mixture of alcohol and def poetry. Afterward, he had pushed down any blossoming feelings and buried them beneath a healthy layer of denial, refocusing all of his attention on the Waitress. But now that he no longer had anyone else to drag his attention away, Charlie was forced to confront his less-than-platonic feelings towards his gorgeous friend.

Their most recent kiss could easily have been labeled as another impulsive drunken make-out session, but Charlie knew that it was more than that. There was no way that he could chalk this up to too many beers. He had _wanted_ to kiss Dee and he was pretty sure that she had wanted to kiss him back. She could blame it on their mutual intoxication, but he wasn’t convinced.

Charlie knew that he had to think this through. This was different than his past relationships, however few and far between they may have been. This was _Dee_. He had known her for over twenty years. The way he handled their burgeoning relationship would dictate the future of the gang. He could ruin everything if he decided to pursue Dee seriously.

But God, he wanted to ruin their friendship.

After days of mulling it over, he was no closer to figuring out how to approach the situation. He had tried to distract himself by working on their song for the hipster bar scheme, but for some reason, all of his lyrics kept coming back to Dee. It seemed that he had no escape from his honey-haired temptress.

The small man ran his fingers through his already messy chocolate hair, causing it to stick up in random directions, making him look something like a castaway stranded on a desert island. He paced the length of his tiny apartment, back and forth, like a caged lion.

Charlie went into the kitchenette, pulling open one of the drawers and fishing around until he discovered an old, battered pack of cigarettes. He flipped open the box, tugging one out with his teeth. He trotted over to the stove, igniting the burner and bending down to light the tip of his cigarette.

He drew in a deep inhale, reveling in the bitter taste of the tobacco and the burn in his lungs. He closed his eyes, tipping his head backward and exhaling a long stream of smoke into the empty apartment. Some of the cats lounging in the sink gave him dirty looks, wrinkling their little noses at the smell.

Charlie came to an impromptu decision, digging his phone out of his back pocket and unlocking the screen. He pulled up his contacts, scrolling through them until he found the bicep emoji. Mac picked up after two rings.

“Charlie?”

“Hey, buddy.” he greeted his long-time pal, taking another long drag from the cigarette perched in his fingers, tapping the ash onto the floor. He walked over to the window, blowing a cloud of smoke out into the alley behind his building.

“What’s up, bro?” Mac asked.

“No questions.” Charlie demanded. “I need to get wasted.” he explained, taking another drag of the cigarette perched in his fingers. Mac made an affirmative noise. Ever since they were kids, Mac had always been there for him when he needed an escape, no questions asked. It was a facet of their personal bro code and what Charlie needed right now was to get totally and utterly blasted.

“I’ll be there in twenty.”

*******

True to his word, Mac showed up at his apartment as promised with a twelve pack of beer in hand. He let himself into the apartment and plopped down on the decrepit, fold-out couch, the springs groaning beneath him as he sank down into the cushions. “Where’s Frank?” he inquired, birch-colored eyes scanning the apartment.

“Not sure.” Charlie admitted, walking over to the couch and flopping down next to him. “He sent a text, but I can’t make sense of it.” Charlie grabbed his phone off the table, pulling up the text and showing it to Mac.

“That’s because you’re illiterate, Charlie.” Mac scoffed, snatching Charlie’s phone from him and examining the message. His thick brows furrowed in confusion as he studied the text. “Actually, nevermind. You’re right, this doesn’t make any fucking sense.” he told him, frowning at the screen. “He says he’s meeting up with Bill Ponderosa and then he sent you a bunch of gibberish, the letter R about twenty times, and a bunch of panda emojis.”

“I wonder what that means.”

“It means he’s probably tripping balls.” Mac replied, matter-of-factly. He tossed Charlie back his phone. “Now let’s get fucked up.” he grinned, pulling a joint out of the breast pocket of his tank-top and waving it seductively under Charlie’s nose.

Charlie returned the smile. He bent down, scrounging around in the garbage around his feet until he came across a lighter. He shook it slightly to make sure that there was still some fuel left in it before he handed it to the man at his side. “Who do you even know that deals weed anymore?” the slight brunette questioned, watching his childhood friend as he placed the spliff in his mouth, cupping his hands around the end of the joint and igniting the lighter, lighting the tip.

The apartment quickly filled with the sickeningly sweet, skunky fragrance of good marijuana. Just the smell caused Charlie to feel calmer, the tension in his shoulders starting to dissipate. The scent reminded him of simpler times, before everything had become complicated by feelings.

Mac took a long hit, holding his breath and offering the joint to Charlie, who accepted it with a lopsided smile. “I still have connections, dude.” Mac explained, “I’m a badass, bro.” he exclaimed, blowing a cloud of pot scented smoke directly into Charlie’s face. He grabbed one of the cans of beer off of the floor, breaking it off the plastic and popping the tab. He leaned back into the beat-up couch, taking a long belt of his beer.

Charlie rolled his eyes, taking a slow hit off the blunt. Almost instantly, Charlie felt the anxiety that was coiled in his belly begin to unwind. The tips of his fingers started to buzz dully, kind of like a pleasant charley horse. He breathed out slowly, exhaling his anxiety out in a puff of smoke.

He passed the joint back to the taller man, who accepted it wordlessly. Despite his naturally pushy and chatty nature, Mac had never forced Charlie to talk when he didn’t want to. When they were kids, Charlie would occasionally show up at Mac’s place in the dead of night on evenings when his Uncle Jack wouldn’t leave him alone, and his best friend would always let him in without a word. The two of them would then proceed to get wasted together. Sometimes, Charlie would talk and other times, he would just cry, and Mac would pat his back gently, his _no homo_ bravado temporarily on the back-burner.

Today, Charlie was dying to talk.

“Hey Mac?” Charlie asked, turning to face the other man, his bright green eyes wide and glassy from the weed. Mac’s eyebrow quirked upward inquisitively as he sipped on his beer. “How did you figure out that you were in love with Dennis?”

Mac choked on his beer, some foam spurting out of his nose. He coughed roughly, pounding his chest. “W-What are you talking about?” he spluttered in between sputtering coughs.

Charlie expelled an annoyed sigh, frowning at his childhood pal. The smaller man leaned over Mac to grab his own beer, falling back into the couch and popping it open. He took a long swallow before he spoke again. “Mac, come on.” he said, staring at his friend, the lines on his forehead creasing in irritation. “You’ve been gay for Dennis as long as I can remember.” Charlie pointed out. Mac looked panicked, his eyes darting around the room, and Charlie thought that he might bolt out of the apartment. He sighed again, reaching over and placing his hand on the other man’s leg, causing him to jolt in surprise. He patted him lightly. “No judgement, dude. It’s just a question.”

Mac took another long drag from the joint, exhaling it slowly and Charlie watched as his body started to relax and he melted into the pillows. “Alright,” he sighed, holding out the spliff to the man on his right, who took it from him. He ran his fingers through his oiled hair distractedly. “I might maybe – just a little bit – have a _thing_ for Dennis.” Mac admitted, his face flushing a deep scarlet, making him resemble a muscular tomato.

Charlie rolled his eyes. “No shit.” he replied sarcastically, and Mac shot him a glare. “But how did you _know_?” Charlie pressed.

Mac paused, considering the question carefully, stroking his chin in contemplation. “At some point…” he mumbled, “Like, I couldn’t imagine him not being a part of my life.” he explicated, tossing back the rest of his beer and crushing the can in his beefy hand. He chucked the empty can into the mess of the apartment. He bent over, snatching another beer and opening it with a carbonated hiss. “He’s a huge prick, but like, when he was gone, I couldn’t stand the silence.” Mac was starting to get worked up, gesticulating wildly. “He’s a fucking asshole, but–”

Charlie was listening raptly. Somehow, Mac was making perfect sense. The Reynolds twins were an enigma. Twin hurricanes tearing through the plains, destroying everything in their path. Beautiful, vain, and manipulative. Gorgeous entities of destruction. Twin flames. Beautiful to look at, but dangerous to the touch.

“I kissed Dee.”

For the second time that night, Mac spat out his beer. He pivoted towards Charlie, bug-eyed. “You did WHAT!?” he cried, clearly exasperated. “Why the fuck would you do that?”

Charlie frowned, chugging the rest of his beer. “I don’t know.” he whined, “We were at Paddy’s and we were dancing–”

“Wait.” Mac interrupted, “Dancing?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions.” Charlie replied, waving a flippant hand in his direction. “We were dancing and she just– I don’t know. She looked so good and I wanted to.” the messy-haired brunette mewled. He glanced back at Mac, his desperation clearly etched into his features. “I want to do it again.” he confessed.

“EW!” Mac exclaimed, “ _Why_?”

“I don’t know!” Charlie blurted, burying his face in his hands.

Mac, who was taking another drag, burst into laughter and gagged on the smoke, which produced another coughing fit. “Oh my God, dude.” he snickered, his voice scratchy from coughing. “You got it bad!” he said, mockingly. “I didn’t know you were into bestiality.” Mac chortled at his own joke, pointing and laughing at Charlie like they were grade schoolers on the playground and he had just forced Charlie to eat a bug.

Charlie glowered at him. “You jack off to Dennis’ sex tapes because you like looking at his balls!” he snapped, and Mac gaped at him like a beached fish.

“You’re the one who made out with a bird!” Mac accused, “Did she poke you in the eye with her beak?” he snarked.

Charlie reached over and pinched his nose shut. Mac snorted like a pig, smacking at Charlie’s hands and proceeding to dump beer over them both in the process. Charlie used his free hand to whap Mac upside the head. Mac responded by kneeing him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him and forcing him off the couch. Charlie grabbed the front of Mac’s tank-top and yanked him down onto the floor.

They scrabbled like children on the dirty floor of Charlie’s apartment until both of them were worn out. They leaned their backs against the couch, sweating profusely, their breathing coming out in haggard pants. “We’re too fucking old for this shit.” Mac wheezed.

“So… what do we do now?” Charlie asked in between exhausted breaths. He snatched one of the remaining beers that had gotten knocked over in the scuffle, and flicked the tab. It was mostly foam, fizzing out onto his jeans. It didn’t really matter anymore though, he was already sticky.

Mac frowned, his dark eyebrows knitting together in contemplation. Charlie’s friend was sweaty and red-faced from the exertion, clutching at his heaving chest. “Fuck if I know.” Mac griped, his breathing beginning to even out. He swiveled around, digging around in the couch cushions until he retrieved the spliff, holding it up triumphantly. He examined the joint to make sure that it hadn’t been soaked through with beer. “The last time I tried to talk with Dennis, I thought he was going to claw his eyes out of my skull.”

“You told him to sleep on the couch so you could bang another guy.” Charlie reminded him, searching around on the ground until he found the lighter, which had skidded underneath the couch during the fray. He grabbed it and held it out to his childhood friend.

“It’s not like it really matters.” Mac responded, his tone laced with bitterness. “He’s never going to be interested in me.”

“I don’t know about that.” Charlie interjected, “You two were practically married before he went to North Dakota.” he pointed out, glancing at Mac. There were fresh scratches on his face from Charlie’s nails. His once meticulously styled hair was sticking out haphazardly. For a moment, Charlie thought that he looked like a little kid again. The same scrappy, wide-eyed boy that he had grown up with in South Philly. “I think you need to talk to Dennis.” he advised.

Mac gnawed on his bottom lip. “If he’ll actually talk to me.” Mac sighed, “It _is_ Dennis after all.” Charlie reached over, giving him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “What about you?” the other man questioned.

“I’m going to write a song.”

*******

_“Oh shit, dude! I think I’m gonna hurl.” Mac choked, slapping his hand over his mouth and stumbling towards a nearby bush. The rest of the gang watched as he dropped to his knees, shoving his head into the shrub and proceeding to vomit noisily._

_Dennis rolled his eyes, his expression unsympathetic. Still, he pushed himself to his feet and made his way over to his sickened roommate. Dennis crouched down beside Mac and shoved his hands under his armpits, awkwardly holding him up so that he didn’t tumble face-forward into his own excrement._

_“Lightweight.” Charlie snickered into the mouth of his beer._

_“Idiot.” Dee agreed, shaking her head in disappointment as the two of them idly observed Mac as he purged the entire contents of his stomach into the abused bush._

_The four of them were on Lemon Hill, spread out over the grass with a plastic cooler between them, steadily working their way towards total intoxication. The boys had just signed the lease for their new bar and the three of them had decided to celebrate reaching the next stage of their lives. What they considered the initial step in their journey towards adulthood. Things could only look up, right?_

_Dee had decided to tag along, if only for an opportunity to get completely annihilated._

_Dee and Charlie were sitting together on the ground underneath a towering oak. Dee glanced at her watch, it was a quarter past midnight, and the hill was illuminated by the twinkle of the city lights. The grass underneath was slightly wet from a storm the day before, dampening the back of her jeans. It was technically still spring, but there was just enough chill in the air to cause goosebumps to climb up her exposed arms. Dee shivered slightly, wishing she had thought to bring a jacket._

_Dee took a long swill of her beer, pale blue eyes scanning the expanse of the hill. There wasn’t anything particularly special about it, it was just a regular hill. Why had sitting here seemed so unattainable in high school?_

_Dee had ended up dropping out of college at the end of her sophomore year in order to pursue an acting career, blatantly ignoring her family’s negativity about her chances at success. She planned on proving all of them wrong. Nothing fueled passion quite as well as spite. It was the Reynolds’ way, after all._

_“So, how does it feel to be a business owner?” the blonde questioned, turning away from the spectacle of Mac barfing into a bush in order to face the man at her side._

_Charlie blinked, pondering her question for a moment. “Not all that different.” he admitted, shrugging. “They’re going to make me do all the shit work anyway. Is cleaning toilets in a bar really all that different from cleaning them at a pizza place?” he inquired, his tone betraying his obvious annoyance with his particular responsibilities._

_“At least you get free booze.” Dee replied, giving him a sympathetic smile. She leaned over to the cooler, a battered red number that Mac had owned since they were teenagers, fishing out another bottle of beer. She frowned, her blonde brows furrowing in irritation. Their supply was starting to run low. She offered one to Charlie, who accepted it with a dopey smile._

_“I guess that’s true.” he acquiesced, tossing his empty bottle into the trash bag they had brought along for empties. The massive number of bottles clinked together. “And you have a job now.” the brunette added, rifling through the pockets of his battered army jacket until he found his bottle opener. He popped the cap off his beer and held the opener out to her._

_“Ugh.” Dee groaned, snatching it out of his hand. “Don’t remind me.” she sighed, “I’m only working for you boners until I get discovered.” the slender blonde told him, gesturing with sharp jabs of the bottle opener._

_“Right.” Charlie agreed, nodding. Dee was starting to feel the effects of all the alcohol she had consumed and her thoughts were beginning to feel cloudy. If he was mocking her, she couldn’t tell. Dee decided to let it go._

_“Yup.” Dee replied, tucking a golden strand of stray hair behind her ear. “I’m going to get discovered and move to LA, where I’m gonna get rich and famous and meet my soulmate.” she said, matter-of-factly, huffing and pouting like a small child. As soon as her brain caught up with what had just tumbled past her lips, she flushed pink. She hadn’t meant to say all of that. Another gust of wind blew through, picking up the leaves in the branches overhead. Dee shivered again._

_“Do you really believe in that stuff?” Charlie questioned her, his pine-shaded eyes wide and inquisitive, shimmering a little in the soft lights coming off of the city._

_“What stuff?” the blonde asked, wrapping her arms around her body and rubbing her arms vigorously, trying to keep herself warm. Why had she thought today would be a good day to wear a sheer tee shirt? Pennsylvania was not exactly known for its stable weather patterns. Granted, she looked fucking hot as hell, but at what cost?_

_“Soulmates.” Charlie replied, placing his beer in between his legs to hold it in place. He started to shrug out of his army jacket. The slight brunette leaned over and wrapped his coat around her shoulders._

_Dee blinked a few times, almost surprised into silence. “W-Why did you do that?” she inquired, unconsciously gripping his jacket around her body like a security blanket. She wasn’t used to even mild acts of kindness, especially not from one of her brother’s shitty friends. A long history of getting shat on by the universe had left her battle-worn and wary. Everyone had ulterior motives. There was always another angle. As far as she was concerned, the world was out to get Dee Reynolds. Charlie shrugged, giving her a small smile, and Dee relaxed slightly._

_He ran an errant hand through his mussed, coffee-colored curls. “You looked cold.” he responded, pulling his beer from between his legs and taking another long pull. Charlie flashed a cursory glance in the direction of the bush, where Mac had finally stopped puking._

_Dee’s gaze followed his. She saw that Dennis was fussing over Mac. He appeared to be annoyed, but she thought that her more maniacal half was doting on the other man unnecessarily. She turned her eyes back to the wiry brunette at her side. Charlie’s jacket was warm. Dee didn’t know what it was about Charlie Kelly, but he always managed to make her feel at ease. She was relaxed with him in a way that she was unaccustomed to, there wasn’t as much need to protect herself or her ego with him. Suddenly, Dee felt uncomfortable, squirming a little. The problem was that Charlie made her feel too comfortable, dangerously so, and she was afraid that her emotions might spiral out of control._

_“I do.” Dee said finally, her voice uncharacteristically quiet._

_“What?” Charlie asked, redirecting his gaze back to her, a question mark clear in his expression._

_“I do believe in soulmates.” Dee admitted. She took another long gulp of beer. If she was going to confess to stupid shit, she might as well have booze as an excuse. “Or at least I want to.” she explained, “My parents fucking hate each other. I want to believe that there’s someone out there for me. Someone who won’t make me completely miserable.” Dee mumbled. She recognized that she was rambling a little, but the amount of alcohol in her system had once again blunted her filter, making her chatty. In truth, it was incredibly stupid of her to be totally vulnerable in front of another member of the gang, every one of them – herself included – was an asshole deep down._

_To her surprise, Charlie just smiled at her. “I think so too.” he told her, his emerald eyes sparkling like fireflies in the iridescent light of the moon. “I think that there’s gotta be someone out there for everyone, ya know?” he continued, his voice cracking a little, the way it did when he got excited about something. “Like, even if you’re kind of a shitty person, someone out there will still love you.”_

_Dee found herself smiling back at him. “Yeah.” she said, “I like that.”_

*******

The day that the gang was going to exact their revenge on The Black Foot was drawing nearer and everyone was on edge.

Charlie had been working nearly nonstop on his song, tossing dozens of crumpled up attempts at lyrics around his apartment. He had spent hours pacing the one-bedroom in seemingly endless circles, chain-smoking nonstop until Frank would throw a can of cat food into his head in an attempt to get him to cease prowling and sit still.

“Charlie, why can I only see one part of the song?” Dee asked him, examining the lyrics that he’d had Artemis transcribe for him, with much effort on her part to make sense of his illiterate ramblings. “I don’t really feel like I can practice without the whole thing.” the blonde complained, pouting at Charlie, her lower lip protruding like a petulant child. Charlie was overwhelmed with the urge to wrap his arms around her and pull her into him for another intense lip-lock. He banished the image. He had a plan.

“It’s a duet, Dee.” the wiry brunette argued, “You don’t need both parts.” he explained, laughing at her as though it was an obvious statement, rather than an absurd one.

Dee frowned at him, her forehead crinkling in frustration. “That doesn’t make any sense.” she protested, but Charlie held up a hand to silence her and she was surprised to find herself obeying him.

Charlie didn’t want Dee to ask too many questions about his musical undertaking. He was worried that if she continued to press him, he would crack and spill everything to her, ruining his perfect plan. Dee tried to probe him a little more, but he managed to evade her questions when Frank arrived home and inserted himself in their conversation. He began regaling the two of them with sordid tales about him and Bill Ponderosa hotwiring a semi-truck and hopping the border into Canada to hit up “those maple-scented hoes.” as he referred to them.

*******

Mac was relaxing, entertaining himself by playing Solitaire on the ancient desktop computer in the back office.

Abruptly, Dennis burst into the room, causing Mac to nearly jump out of his skin, his heart palpating wildly. Dennis chucked a pile of clothes at his roommate. They smacked him in face and fell into his lap. Mac picked up the shirt and examined it. “What’s this?” he inquired.

“Your uniform shirt, dumbass.” Dennis snapped, “We need to blend in when we sneak into the hipster bar.” he reminded him. “I have fake nametags too.” he told them, tugging them out of the back pocket of his ridiculously tight jeans. He handed one of the tags to Mac. It read “Rob.”

The uniform shirt was a black, form-fitting tee shirt with the logo for The Black Foot emblazoned across the chest in white. Mac checked the inside of the for a tag. “Did you get me a Large?” he inquired, “’Cause I know that I was a Medium when you left, but I’ve gotten totally jacked now.” he explained, flexing his bicep for emphasis. “My arms are way too beefy for a Medium.” the brawny brunette claimed.

Dennis scoffed. “Who cares?” he asked, “You’re just going to cut off the sleeves, anyway.” he snarked, rolling his brilliant blue eyes in clear annoyance.

Mac considered protesting, but the truth was that he _had_ been planning on cutting of the sleeves in order to further accentuate his newly toned arms, hoping that the wimpy hipsters at The Black Foot would find his superior musculature intimidating. Instead, he asked, “What time are we heading there?”

“You and I need to be posted in the alley behind the kitchen at six forty-five.” Dennis reminded him, his voice slowly losing its edge. “Just make sure you bring your lockpicking kit.”

“This is going to be so fucking awesome, dude.” Mac replied, his voice almost giddy. Dennis responded with a mischievous smile that made him feel both excited and terrified at the same time. He clutched the shirt tighter in his fingers.

“If we do it right, they might not even make it to Dee and Charlie’s performance.” Dennis added, grinning devilishly. Mac laughed in spite of himself. He liked Dennis when he acted like this, calm and laidback and friendly. It was easier this way. They were just two guys being bros, nothing deeper involved – at least that’s what he kept telling himself. Superficial was easy. Superficial was safe.

“Yeah.” the other man agreed, smiling up at his long-time friend. “They’ll probably walk out when they see Dee’s ugly ostrich face.” he snarked and Dennis tossed his head back, releasing a deep belly laugh. Mac couldn’t stop his grin from widening. He loved to make Dennis laugh.

The two of them exchanged a few more playful jabs and Charlie and Dee’s expense. It was easier to disregard the tension that simmered between them when they were busy mocking others. Joking around was easy and for a while, Mac could pretend that Dennis hadn’t abandoned him and fled to North Dakota, leaving him feeling empty and more alone that he had ever felt in his life. Mac wasn’t willing to tell his on-again, off-again roommate that for the first two months that he had been gone, he could barely get off the couch, let alone leave the apartment. Eventually, Charlie had quite literally had to drag him off of the couch and out of his apartment.

But in spite of everything, Mac had managed to pick himself up and put himself back together again, piece by piece. He had started by working out like a maniac, polishing his physique. After a while, he had started messing around with some guys that he had met at the gym and Rainbow, discovering that he was much better at scoring with hot beefcakes than he had been with women. He had forged a new life for himself. He had built a new routine. A life that had come crashing down around him the instant that he had walked into Paddy’s and laid eyes on his runaway roommate.

Dennis, in typical form, had come tearing back into his life like an out of control wildfire, engulfing his entire world in a whirlwind of destruction. And Mac, as he was wont to do, had buckled immediately, allowing the other man to demolish everything that he had tried to build in his absence.

Mac had not felt as alive in the past ten months as he had with Dennis’ hands on him, even though he had been trying to scratch his face to ribbons in a blind range. He knew that their relationship was fucked up. That somewhere inside, he was fundamentally broken, unable to truly function without this toxic, codependent relationship. Sometimes, he imagined the two of them were like parasites, feeding off of one another’s internal poison, knowing somewhere deep in their souls that trying to separate would spell death for them both.

 _God, I’m so fucked up._ Mac thought to himself, still smiling stupidly at Dennis.

*******

“Charlie, do you think this looks stupid?” Dee inquired, walking out into her living room. She had already changed her outfit at least ten times, not satisfied with anything that she had put together. She posed in front of Charlie, swirling around to show him the entire ensemble. The messy-haired brunette had advised her to wear something casual that was easy to run in. She had finally settled on a loose, off the shoulder top in slate gray and a pair of skintight black leggings. On her feet, she was sporting a pair of black leather ankle boots with a low heel.

Charlie gazed up at her, his eyes travelling the length of her body in a way that she might have found salacious if she wasn’t positive that he was just exhausted by her anxiety riddled fashion show. “You look great, Dee.” he told her, staring up to meet her gaze, his sage-colored eyes boring into her own and she felt naked and exposed. She thought that he was probably poking fun at her, the way everyone did, but something about his gaze seemed so sincere that it took her off-guard.

He hopped off the couch and grabbed Dee’s hands. Even though everyone made fun of the size of her hands, Charlie’s broad hands seemed to engulf her own and she wondered why she had never really noticed it before. The two of them were nearly the same height, but somehow, Charlie still made her feel small and safe. “Stop freaking out.” he soothed her, squeezing her hands and Dee felt an intense warmth spread throughout her chest, her heart skipping a beat. The blonde closed her eyes and took a few measured breaths, releasing her tension. When she opened her eyes, she found Charlie smiling at her. “You’re going to do fine.” he reassured her, “You haven’t eaten anything, so you probably won’t gag.” he added playfully, giving her a little wink.

Dee managed a laugh in spite of her nervousness and gave his hands a squeeze. Charlie’s smile widened and she felt another tug at her heartstrings that she desperately tried to ignore. She dropped his hands reluctantly.

“Let’s go.” Dee said.

*******

“Are you almost in?” Dennis asked, his tone bordering on frustrated. He was glancing down the alley nervously.

“Don’t rush me, dude!” Mac spat under his breath and Dennis expelled an irritated sigh. Mac did his best to ignore him and pay attention to what he was doing.

“We’re on a time limit now.” Dennis reminded him, checking his watch and sliding anxious fingers through his wavy brown hair. “Dee texted me that she and Charlie are almost up.” he explained. He was playing with the hem of his skintight black tee shirt, tugging at an errant string. He had pulled his shirt up far enough that Mac could see a strip of his taught, alabaster skin. He felt a sizzling blush crawl across his cheeks and turned away from the other man, trying his best to concentrate on the task at hand.

Dennis fished a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and pulled one out, placing it between his impossibly pink lips. “You’re smoking again?” Mac inquired, glancing in his direction. Dennis retrieved a silver Zippo from his other pocket, lighting the filtered end of his cigarette and flipping the cap on his lighter closed with a metallic snap.

“Started in North Dakota.” he admitted, taking a long drag, his sharp blue eyes darting around the alley again. He leaned his back against the brick wall of the building.

“Why?” Mac asked him before he could stop himself. His cheeks were still flushed pink and he had to force himself to focus on the lock, praying that Dennis couldn’t see just how red his face was in the weak light of the alley. He could sense Dennis’ brilliant blue eyes boring into him as he worked.

“Dunno.” Dennis shrugged. “Stress, I guess.”

Mac tried again to concentrate on the lock, maneuvering the slight tension wrench into the tiny hole and pressing on the plug, but his mind had started to drift. He had already inquired as to why Dennis had left Philadelphia, but he had never really asked him anything about his life in North Dakota. Truthfully, he didn’t know all that much about Mandy or his son. Admittedly, Dennis seemed to want to keep that information close to the vest and Mac had been trying not to push him. He wondered if Dennis had missed him when he was in Bismarck, but he couldn’t gather the guts to ask him that question. More than anything, he feared the answer. What if Dennis hadn’t been as lonely as Mac had been? What if Mac was the only one who had felt fucked up inside when Dennis absconded to a different state fifteen hundred miles away? What if Mac was the dependent idiot and Dennis couldn’t care less?

Mac pulled the pick from where he had it perched behind his ear. He slid it into the top of the lock and applied light pressure to the tension wrench grasped in his other hand. “So, you didn’t like North Dakota?” he asked him, raking the pit along the inside of the plug.

Dennis scoffed. “It was the worst.” he told him, taking another long drag from his cigarette, observing Mac closely with his sharp, aquamarine eyes as the other man wrestled with the lock.

“So…” Mac said, speaking carefully, trying his best to keep his voice even and ignore the way his heart was pounding against his ribcage. “Did you miss Philly?” he questioned, glancing at Dennis again, who was still studying his profile, his expression was caught somewhere in between intrigued and flustered.

“I came back, didn’t I?”

“Why did you come back, Dennis?” Mac asked him for the second time in a few days, his voice coming out low and husky. He forgot about the lock. He forgot about the scheme and the time crunch. He pivoted his head so that he could stare up at his roommate, whose shimmering blue eyes were scrutinizing him intensely, his gaze white-hot, and Mac felt as though he was peering directly into his soul.

Dennis’ brows knitted together as he considered the question, his frustration clearly etched in his sharp features. Finally, he growled, “You’re such a fucking idiot.”

Mac felt his thin thread of resolve snap and he shot to his feet, his cheeks flushed scarlet with mounting anger. Why was Dennis always such an asshole to him? Mac opened his mouth to tell Dennis what a huge dick he was when the other man pounced, shoving him roughly against the wall of the building, his back slamming against the grimy brick behind the bar. Mac grunted, moving to push the other man away from him, thinking that Dennis was about to start clawing at him again when Dennis closed the gap between them, crashing his lips into Mac’s and suddenly, Mac felt pinned to the spot.

A strangled noise caught in the back of his throat and Dennis used the opportunity to force his tongue into Mac’s mouth. It was then that he stopped fighting the other man’s advances and gave himself over to the kiss, his eyes fluttering shut. Dennis pulled away, peppering a line of light kisses along the line of his jaw and down his neck. “You’re such a goddamned idiot.” Dennis told him, his voice low and gravelly, his breath hot against Mac’s neck. Mac felt a shiver run down the length of his spine. He had never been so happy to be an idiot.

Mac opened his eyes, reaching up to run his fingers through the other man’s dark, curly hair. “Den, I –”

Abruptly, the kitchen door slammed open, nearly smashing into the two of them and they leapt apart. A twenty-something hipster with a thick beard and his long, sandy hair pulled up into a messy manbun, sporting a gold septum piercing, exited the back restaurant. He was busy lugging a giant bag of trash towards the dumpster, grumbling to himself.

Spotting the two men, he paused, frowning at them. “You two better get back into the kitchen.” Manbun advised. “Shit is getting crazy in there.” he explained, “There are these two assholes who keep heckling all the performers at the open mic.” The tired waiter expelled an exhausted sigh.

Dennis and Mac exchanged a look, trying to hide their conspiratorial smiles.

The bearded hipster strode back into the kitchen and Mac leapt to grab the door before it closed behind him. He held it open for Dennis, like a gentleman, and the other man quirked his eyebrow, the barest hint of a smile crossing his attractive features. Then, he frowned as something dawned on him.

“Mac,” he spoke slowly, “Was the door open this entire time?”

“Um–” Mac spluttered. The truth was that he had been so preoccupied with showing off his sweet new lockpicking skills that he hadn’t bothered to check whether or not the door was unlocked.

“Idiot.” Dennis hissed in his ear as he placed his palms on his back, shoving him forward, but Mac could hear the smile in his voice.

*******

“BOO!” Charlie yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth. “You sound like shit!” he shouted. The singer glared at him, strumming his banjo in an angry motion.

“You look like how vomit smells!” Dee heckled, flashing Charlie a grin. The two of them were having a grand time mocking the other acts and antagonizing the waitstaff when they came over to their table to beg them to quiet down.

A gangly twenty-something of indeterminate gender sporting a long violet side cut that fell past their shoulders, stuffed under a knit cap, climbed onto the stage. They had a clipboard clutched tightly in their shaking hand. “Um. Our next act is a musical duo.” the announcer informed the audience, their voice trembling. They were clearly struggling with being the center of attention. “Please welcome Kitten Mittons?” they read the name with a note of confusion evident in their voice.

Dee turned to face Charlie, ready to protest the name he had chosen, but he had already jumped excitedly to his feet. “Let’s do this.” the messy-haired brunette said, holding out his hand to her. Dee reached forward and clasped it gingerly, allowing him to pull her to her feet and guide her to the stage.

He pulled the crumpled lyrics from one of the pockets of his baggy, black hoodie, pressing the paper into her quivering hands. “Follow my lead.” he murmured, moving to set up his keyboard with expert precision. He started to play a slow, melodious tune and Dee gulped, swallowing the bile that threatened to climb up the back of her throat. She was thankful that she hadn’t eaten anything. She swallowed thickly and turned to face the crowd, trying her best to focus her gaze above the audience and ignore the feeling of all of their eyes on her.

Charlie played a few notes on his keyboard and surprisingly, the noise in the bar began to die down. When he started to sing, all of the patrons and waitstaff paused and turned to watch the grubby little heckler with the intoxicating voice.

Dee had expected the absent lyrics to be filled with ghouls and spiders and thinly veiled descriptions of sexual assault. Instead, Charlie had started to sing about a beautiful princess, and not one who worked part-time in a coffee shop. In his song, the princess had been cursed, her body trapped in a metal cage, and it caused the people around her to treat the lovely princess as though she was a monster. He told the tale of a lowly peasant, who was able to see past the curse and noticed how beautiful and wonderful the princess was.

Abruptly, Dee realized that she had turned away from the crowd to look directly at Charlie, his visage blurred by a curtain of tears. Her hands were trembling as she glanced down at her own lyrics and her voice shook slightly when she tried to sing them. Charlie glanced up from the piano and caught her eye, giving her a small, lopsided smile. She did her best to sing back to him, nearly forgetting that they were on stage at all. The words that she had been practicing were beginning to make sense now that they were meshing with his and now that she finally understood their meaning, she felt compelled to make them matter.

They sang about how the lovely princess and the peasant boy danced around one another, looking for love in all the wrong places with all the wrong people. The two of them had wandered around the world, searching for something that had been in front of them the entire time.

Dee wiped away the tears that had collected from the corners of her powder-blue eyes.

Charlie was beaming at Dee, clearly putting the utmost effort into performing his song for her. His lyrics illustrated a tale of how the peasant boy helped release the beautiful princess from her shackles with true love’s kiss. He ended his song in the same way he had completed his Valentine’s Day song, by publicly declaring his love to her. Suddenly, Dee was overcome with a rush of emotion. Unlike the last time, there was no need to try and laugh this off, no desire to brush it aside and pretend that it had never happened. For possibly the first time in her life, she was no longer afraid of displaying her feelings for everyone to see.

Abruptly, a wave of applause began to spring up around them, popping her bubble and bringing her back into the present. She was standing on a cheap wooden stage in the center of some shitty hipster bar in South Philly. Dee watched, mesmerized, as Charlie stretched and then grabbed his keyboard in both hands, hefting it up.

“Thank you, Philly!” Charlie yelled out across the bar, grinning evilly. “ _NOW FUCK THIS PLACE!_ ”

Dee watched, as if in slow motion, as Charlie lifted the keyboard and swung it full force into the nearest speaker, smashing it to pieces. The speaker crumpled inward like a paper lantern, sparks flying from the front of the machine. He threw the damaged keyboard down onto the stage where it emitted an earsplitting, discordant sound. Charlie then proceeded to launch himself off the stage like a panther and bolt towards the front door.

In a split second, Dee’s brain kicked back into gear and her body reacted instantaneously. She high-kicked the microphone stand, knocking it over, and leaped onto the nearest table. The blonde thanked God that she had worn shoes without a heel as she proceeded to kick the mason jars full of craft beer into the laps of the bug-eyed customers at the table.

Everyone in the restaurant had been rendered immobile, unable to respond to the two explosive psychopaths that were currently destroying the bar.

“Suck it, boners!” Dee screamed, cackling like a witch as she vaulted off of the table and landed roughly on her ass. She scrambled to her feet quickly and ran towards Charlie, forcefully shoving a random waiter out of her way in the process.

He grabbed her hand. “I LOVE THIS WOMAN!” Charlie bellowed into the chaos of the bar, dragging Dee in the direction of the door.

Behind them, there was a loud pop, like a tire bursting on the highway, and shrill alarms began to blare. Suddenly, the sprinkler systems sprung into life, whirling sheets of water everywhere, soaking everyone in the bar. A swell of dark, black smoke that smelled something like burnt fish and charcoal began to billow out from beneath the door leading into the kitchen and without warning, the door burst open and the kitchen staff flooded the restaurant, coughing and hacking.

Amidst the bedlam, Dee and Charlie managed to slip out of the front door, hand in hand, dripping wet and laughing like maniacs.

“Come on.” Dee urged him, dragging him up the street and around the corner where she had parked her car. “Let’s get the fuck out of here before we get arrested.”

By the time they reached her car – a used, green hatchback that the gang had yet to destroy – Dee couldn’t take it anymore. She popped the lock and yanked open the back door, shoving Charlie into the car and climbing in after him. The blonde used her strong hands to force his wet back flat against the vinyl interior and proceeded to crawl on top of him, straddling his waist.

“What about getting caught?” Charlie breathed, but Dee could hear the desire in his voice.

“I think the police have more important matters to attend to than two forty-somethings fucking around in the back of a Subaru.” Dee murmured, swooping down in order to bring their lips together. Her blonde hair fell around his face in wet, coiling tendrils. Charlie responded in kind, his strong, calloused hands travelling the length of her body with enthusiasm.

There was a desperation in the moment that Dee had not felt in their previous encounters. She wanted every part of Charlie. To own him, taste him, consume him. To his credit, he was a willing subject, allowing the beguiling blonde to guide the experience. Dee explored his mouth with her talented tongue. Her nimble fingers wandered down his chest, hovering over the button on his jeans. Suddenly, she paused, pulling away and Charlie opened his emerald eyes to peer up at her curiously.

“Is this okay?” Dee asked, her voice trembling slightly with a mixture of arousal and nervousness. She had not been this anxious since her first time. Dee knew that she could be more than a little aggressive in bed, orchestrating every carnal encounter to make herself feel special, validated. In spite of the memories being blurred by alcohol, the blonde was aware that she had been pushy with Charlie the first time they had slept together. But, it was different this time. This time she wanted it to be special. She wanted to know it was real.

Charlie expelled a quiet sigh and gave her a tiny smile. He reached up to push back an unruly strand of hair from her eyes and grasp her cheeks in his calloused hands. “Dee, I swear to God.” the messy-haired brunette murmured, his voice strained. “If we don’t bang soon, I’m going to lose my shit.” he confessed and the hunger in his voice sent an electric jolt down her spine that settled in her lower belly.

The next few minutes was a flurry of activity as the two of them scrabbled to quickly divest themselves of their soggy clothes. Manipulating in the narrow backseat of the hatchback wasn’t easy, but with some nimble maneuvers and a little determination, Dee and Charlie managed.

*******

In the aftermath of their lovemaking, the two of them lay with their limbs entwined, covered in a layer of sweat. The windows had fogged over during their passion.

Dee’s slender, white-tipped nails traced wayward patterns down Charlie’s chest. His arm was wrapped protectively around her, his fingers threaded in her honey-colored hair. Dee nestled her face in the curve of his neck, inhaling his scent, which was surprisingly unoffensive, considering that it was Charlie.

“Hey, Dee?” Charlie interjected, his voice breaking the soothing silence of the car.

“Hmm?”

“You didn’t say it back.” he pointed out. A deep scarlet crawled across Dee’s slender cheekbones and she buried her face further into the crook of his neck, mumbling protests into his skin.

“Do I _have_ to?” Dee whined. “It’s embarrassing.” she told him, and Charlie chuckled. She could feel his throat vibrate against the tip of her nose as he laughed.

“Try saying it in front of a bar full of people.” Charlie teased. Dee released a resigned sigh and pushed herself upward, propping her arms on his chest and craning her neck so that she could look him directly in the eye.

“I love you, Charlie.”

*******

When the two of them were finished cuddling, Dee searched around the floor of the car until she found her phone. She figured that she should probably tell the rest of the gang that the two of them had successfully escaped the bar. There were a few notifications. Dennis had texted Dee during the middle of her backseat rendezvous with Charlie.

**< DENNIS: Did the two of you get arrested or something?>**

**< DEE: no, just distracted. ** **🍆** **> **

**< DENNIS: EW ** **🤮** **>**

 **< DEE:** **🖕** **>**

**< DENNIS: We’re watching a movie. Wanna come over?>**

“Do you want to go over to Mac and Dennis’ place to watch a movie with them?” Dee asked, tipping her chin upward.

“Sure.” Charlie agreed. “Sounds fun.”

**< DEE: be there soon.>**

*******

The door to Dennis and Mac’s apartment was already unlocked when Dee and Charlie arrived.

Charlie pulled Dee into the apartment after him. He had refused to let go of her hand the entire way up the stairs to the flat and did not seem to want to release her now.

“Hey.” her brother greeted the two of them, not bothering to take his eyes off the television screen. One of his long, slender arms was slung casually around Mac’s broad back and he had his head perched on Dennis’ shoulder.

Dennis glanced at Dee and their eyes locked momentarily. He acknowledged her and Charlie’s interlaced fingers and the corner of his lips turned up in a small smirk, his dark brows rising towards his hairline inquisitively, but he said nothing. Dee waggled her eyebrows suggestively and gave him a smug smile.

Charlie tugged her over to the couch and plopped down, yanking her into his lap. Dee could not stop herself from smiling like a fucking idiot as Charlie wrapped his arms around her waist as though it was the most normal thing and the world and if she were being honest, it felt completely natural. “What movie is this?” Charlie questioned.

Mac leaned forward to snatch a beer off the coffee table and then nestled himself back into the crook of Dennis’ arm before popping the tab. “It’s called The Chinese Connection.” the muscular man told him.

The front door opened again and Frank waddled into the apartment. He was already raging at them, red-faced and panting from the exertion. “I cannot believe you idiots destroyed the entire fucking bar!” the short man ranted, “There are investigators all over the place!” Frank chided, angrily. He turned his sharp gaze to Mac and Dennis. “How did the two of you manage to _blow up_ the kitchen?”

“Hey, hey!” Mac protested, crossly. He sat his beer on the coffee table and pulled himself up straighter. Dennis’ arm slid down to his waist, but the slender man did not pull it away. “How was I supposed to know the wood stove would explode like that!?”

“Because you put seventy-five proof alcohol in it, ya dingus!”

Mac flopped back into the couch, releasing a loud, exaggerated groan and crossing his beefy arms over his chest in a huff. Dennis brought his arm back up and gave him an affectionate pat on the shoulder.

Frank sighed. In the end, the deed was done, and The Black Foot was destroyed with little chance of rebuilding in the area. The pudgy man took another look around the apartment, taking in the two new couples and his eyebrows climbed his forehead in clear surprise. “So, are we going to talk about this?” he inquired, gesturing to the rest of the gang.

“Absolutely not, dude.”

“Just move past it.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Shut up, Frank.”

Frank shrugged and proceeded to trot over to the coffee table. He grabbed a beer and waltzed over to the nearest armchair, flopping down into it and popping the tab. The five of them turned back towards the television wordlessly.

After a few minutes, chatter and arguments began to bubble up around the room and just like that, the gang fell back into its typical routine.

**END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been a ride. Before this story, I had not written a single word since my father passed away from cancer in 2016. I couldn't find the inspiration no matter how hard I tried. I was beginning to fear that I would never write another word. Then, about a year ago, my partner (at the time, she has since left me and I miss her more than words could ever say) suggested that we try to watch Sunny together and before I knew what was happening, I had filled an entire notebook with bits and pieces of this story. 
> 
> I spent my time after that typing it up and re-arranging my ramblings into a comprehensive story. My favorite part of fandom has always been shipping. I love to ship and I always want to believe that ultimately love conquers all, even a dysfunctional love between two dysfunctional people who are somehow perfect for one another despite all of their glaring faults. Charlie and Dee reignited a passion in me that I worried had died. While I can empathize with those who do, I don't really care if Time's Up and Megan Ganz tainted that couple with a ridiculous episode, this is still one of my favorite pairings of all time and I will forever appreciate it for giving me back my voice.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading my story xx


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